Common sense and the peace train song
I ONCE shared a house with several people when I was in college. Sometime during the course of my stay I went home for the holidays and forgot my toothbrush in the bathroom. When I came back from Gwanda I reclaimed my toothbrush and without giving much thought to it I started using it again. Imagine my shock a few months down the line when I went to the bathroom and found one of my housemates using my toothbrush.
When I asked him why, he claimed it was his toothbrush. He said he had found it in the bathroom during the holidays and assumed it had no owner. I was horrified to realise that for months I had been sharing a toothbrush with that dirty, unhealthy looking drunkard. I am extremely emotional by nature and the younger me was terrible at controlling my emotions; so I just sat down and sobbed my heart out.
Everyone rushed out of their rooms to find out who had died and when I told them that brute had been using my toothbrush I was even more traumatised by the responses I got. Some laughed saying it was no big deal, others accused me of being a drama queen and just one or two sympathised with me. I could not believe it! That in this day and age, there are people who see nothing wrong with sharing toothbrushes.
A few years later, I hired a maid and she moved in with me. Because of my previous toothbrush woes, I asked her if she had a towel, toothbrush and sanitary pads and she said yes, she had. Two weeks down the line I discovered she actually did not own a towel and had been bathing with my baby son’s towel. I was angry but fortunately; I was no longer the sensitive emotional wreck my young self had been, so I managed not to do anything drastic. I had another rude awakening to the fact that there are people in this world who have no qualms about taking the same towel they scrubbed their backsides with and use it on an innocent baby’s face. What if she had pubic lice, gonorrhoea, scabies or any other infection that can be spread by sharing towels?
Most of us have had encounters with people and been left wondering why many people do not seem to display what we have termed “common sense.” Most of our squabbles arise from misunderstandings about the different ways we handle ourselves and the different ways in which we respond to each other. Common sense is described as good sense and sound judgment in practical matters. This means that we have certain expectations about what good judgment is, but what most of us are not conscious of is the fact that because of our different languages, which result in different idioms, which give us different mindsets; as well as different upbringings, different backgrounds, different personalities and different characters, what sound judgment is to me, is not necessarily what it is to you!
In Zimbabwe the way people live is different in each community. In the villages, we live among family and resources are usually scarce. It is not surprising to find an entire family sharing one towel or a couple sharing a toothbrush. The majority of people in the village are related and most rural communities are “strong”.
In urban areas we have high density areas where you can find many families co-existing in one house and in the worst cases, several families in one room, divided by curtains resulting in moral degradation, diseases and other social ills. Children play in the streets because the yards are small, making them streetwise. Houses are built close to each other and the people forge relationships almost as close as that of family. Population is high, so is competition for resources, resulting in high rates of crime.
We also have the low density suburb type of community where houses are far from each other. They have big, fenced yards and children play at home. People in this community generally keep to themselves. Normally, resources are in abundance in this community and little sharing is required.
Because of these different communities, the idea of common sense cannot fully apply. It is common sense to someone brought up in the village to think, why buy another towel when we already have so many in the house? To the one from high density areas where disease outbreaks are common, it is common sense to make sure nobody has access to their towel or toothbrush so they carry them to the bedroom after use. To the one raised in affluence, the issue of towel sharing never arises because their personal bathroom is loaded with several freshly laundered towels; of different sizes and different uses. It is common sense to her that towels are “not an issue!”
I have encountered several people who have no problem with going through my phone. People who, given the chance, can sit down and go through every picture and video in my phone and see nothing wrong with it. When you respond angrily to such people, they are often shocked, offended and hurt. “What’s the big deal, its only pictures?” or even, what are you hiding? If I do not consciously remind myself that not everyone was brought up to know that you do not go through anyone’s phone, you do not open letters addressed to anyone other than yourself, I will have unnecessary bitterness towards people whose common sense is different from mine.
A friend of mine had a long term visitor once who did nothing to help out with the housework. She was frustrated and feared that her maid would leave because of the extra load of work. The visiting friend was shocked to hear that; because she had taken it for granted that she did not have to do anything since there was a maid in the house. I have heard several people complain about sisters-in-law who expect to be cleaned up after and cooked for without them lifting a finger. If these two groups of people do not sit down and find common ground they will forever clash, with one accusing the other of lacking the common sense to help out with chores and the other care-freely enjoying her stay thinking all is well.
A confrontational person thinks it is common sense to beat up anyone who disrespects them and a cool tempered one believes it is common sense to only talk about an issue when they have calmed down. A passive aggressive wife believes her husband must have the common sense to apologise or change when she silently gives him “attitude”, not knowing the husband could have been raised to believe it is common sense to let someone be, when they do not feel like talking.
We are all different people trying to find personal happiness. Our intolerance of each other’s differences brings about nothing but pain, sadness, anger and desolation. When we accept the fact that not everyone wrongs us because they are out to get us, we will be able to forgive more easily. Our experiences guide our logic and we have different ideas and levels of reasoning capacity.
My favourite song is Peace Train by Dolly Parton featuring Black Mambazo and it asks us why we can’t live like brothers and sisters. Istimela sokuthula, a beautiful ideal where we live in peace and we tolerate each other’s differences and shortcomings. Most of us have fought violently with our siblings only to wake up the next day loving them fiercely. With our brothers and sisters, fights do not lead to perpetual hatred and forgiveness is usually a given. Imagine if we treated everyone else with that much love and tolerance.
We cannot avoid feelings of anger and hurt when people wrong us. It is human nature to feel betrayed and attacked. Most of the time we cannot control how we feel. Fortunately, we can control what we do after the emotions have gone and that is when we have the option to create eternal enemies or jump on the peace train.