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How Many Cigars Does It Take to Make a Forest?

The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant. It's that they know so much that isn't so
   -Ronald Reagan

 
Right here, right now, what is going on?  What do you hear? What do you see? Stop. Feel your bones and smell the air around you. I know you are reading words, probably at your computer or maybe on a handheld device.
 
Stop. I mean it. Peel your eyes away from the display and look at what else is going on. Notice the colors and the weather. Don’t read another word until you really know what your shoes look like. Okay. You have taken a moment to be in the present. That is a rare and rarer thing in this busy age of multi-tasking and interpretation.
 
Reagan up there accused the liberals of knowing things that are not so. Perhaps by leading with a quote from that republican president, you feel you already know what I am going to say. You may be ready to agree with me, or prepared to rebut me to the ground.
 
I don’t think his statement applies exclusively to liberals. It’s a problem of missing the trees for the forest. So many times people are ready to assume a whole trail of meaning by a small signifier.  One color, one preference can be a flag in the ground.
 
Red. Blue. Green. Rainbow. We all know what that means.
 
Choice of automobile, choice of shoes, sports team—these mean you are a certain type of person. So wise are the rest of us, so clever that we can interpret these obvious signs of each other’s character. All our many ‘isms’ have given us the decoder ring to the human race.
 
We are too clever for ourselves by half. Maybe a cigar is just a cigar.
 
So, Ronnie, I want to stop and listen to my fellow humans—even if they are liberals—and see what they know. We’ve already used up what we know. It is time for some new ideas, and stopping to listen to each other is the only way to get at them.