Things Aren't Always as They Appear

Things are not always as they appear. While I had always known that, the everyday use of that phrase really struck home with me when an important guest dropped in at our home unexpectedly. My wife, upon seeing the guest's car pull up in the drive, immediately yanked the vacuum cleaner from the closet and plopped it in the middle of the middle of the living room floor. I thought this was rather odd, but I understood the little minx when the guest entered and she said apologetically, "I was just starting to clean house before you came. But I'd much rather talk to you if you can tolerate our house like this."

She says she learned the trick from a friend who pulled it on her mother-in-law who learned it from another friend who probably learned it from another friend, or a sister, or maybe a women's magazine. Who knows?

Did the white lie she told hurt anyone? No, not really. It stroked the guest's ego that my wife wanted to spend time with him, and it gave my wife an "out" for having a dirty house. Which, by the way, wasn't all that dirty.

What is it with women and dirty houses anyway? Perhaps that is something else that isn't as it always appears. To me, and to most of the other men I know, our homes look just fine, but to hear our wives talk we're all living in a pig sty. I guess it is all in how it appears to who is looking at it. The thing is, we who see it one way have to pay for it being the other way.

Then there are people who aren't as they appear. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not. My wife is one of those highly educated people who often talks as if she's got an eighth grade education. She says just because you know a bunch of fancy words doesn't mean you have to use them. She compares it to clothes: just because you have a lot of nice clothes don't mean you wear them all at once. I think it's just that she doesn't like the kind of people who are in the upper educated level. Which means her excuse isn't what it appears. It could be a cover-up for some insecurity, who knows?

I'm using all of these personal examples to make a point. If we in our own lives have a multitude of things that aren't as they appear, what is there out there in the political, social, religious, and economic world that aren't as they appear? We in this country are so quick to make judgments. Perhaps because we have the freedom of speech we think we have to use it. And use it we do. Often.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't voice their opinions. But I do think that people often voice an opinion before they've had a chance to really look at something from all angles and to see that maybe, just maybe, it isn't as it appears. If people would be more willing to learn - to admit that they don't know everything or don't understand something - then we as a nation could take a giant step forward because the citizenry would be acting as questioning individuals - as people who realize that things aren't always as they appear -and who are ready to learn how to best find the answers to the problems facing our country.