A little good sense
My Aunt Clara was quite a woman. The stories and guidance she shared with me as child are still today both my rock and my compass.
A proud Cherokee whose hair was still jet black well into her 80s, she was still living on her own into her 90s. In one lifetime, she lived through two world wars, the influenza epidemic, and the Great Depression. Throughout her life, she held to two principles, a strong faith and good sense.
There was not too much that would make her angry, but she had little patience for people she deemed to be “sorry.” That was her term for persons of low character, selfish types who did not consider their duty towards their fellow humans. She was a little more forgiving of people she considered to be just bone stupid, “touched” in her words These were the sort one tried to help if possible. Long before “social distancing” Aunt Clara would mention something about “that bug that’s going around” and advise those she loved to avoid crowds when there was an outbreak of flu or some other “bug.”
The truth is the situation we are facing today is not “unprecedented” and there is a great deal of wisdom from our elders that is useful to us today. In this week’s column, we will explore some of Aunt Clara’s proverbs and what we can learn from them.
“You know there’s a bug going around.” This was Aunt Clara’s way of saying to practice good sense. If you didn’t need to go out, if you didn’t have urgent business, you didn’t go out. This was not something that one needed the government to enforce in those days, folks just naturally stayed to themselves as much as possible until the worst of it passed. This was not a cure-all of course, but it did help. Now it seems, we need the government to tell us this.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Strong lye soap was a staple in every self-respecting home in those days and washing one’s hands was the 11th commandment. You did not sit down at Aunt Clara’s table until you had washed and cleaned up. Parents were expected to keep their children clean and well mannered lest they be considered “trashy” or “sorry.” Clean and sanitary were the watchwords in every respectable home.
“Don’t take more than you need.” The toilet paper hoarding situation we are facing these days would have struck Aunt Clara as both foolish and un-Christian. The idea of a grown man fighting an old lady over a package of toilet paper, as I have heard has happened lately, would have been completely unacceptable. I sincerely doubt if Aunt Clara could have found sufficient epithets in her vocabulary for such a person. She never used profanity, considering it unladylike, but I suspect the terms “sorry” and “trashy” would have been included in her criticism of such a person. The very concept of hoarding, of selfishly reacting to a crisis without regard for one’s neighbors, would have been foreign to Aunt Clara’s entire world view.
We live in a different time I suppose, but we are still human ... I hope. If there is anything to be learned from this current crisis, perhaps it is to remember that we are human and that we need each other. All of the guns and ammunition in the world will not help to when your need is for medicine and a kind hand to nurse you back to health.
In this no-deposit, no-return society we have built for ourselves in the last century or so, we have forgotten the basic tools of survival. We glorify selfishness and violence and forget that we cannot survive alone. We curse the farmer driving his tractor on the road, truck driver who happens to be in our way as we hurry to someplace or other, and forget that without that farmer and that truck driver there would be food in the store and no medicine in the pharmacy.
There is a reason why we live in communities. We need each other. The Great Spirit created us that way.
The fact is, this too shall pass, but it is a lesson, I think. It is perhaps to remind us that no one is an island, as a wise man once said. Let us take this time to become better. To value those around us, to remember that we need each other. From the nurse to the truck driver, from the mechanic to the food delivery person, we need each other. Let us remember that.
And let us use a “little good sense,” as Aunt Clara would say.