Trying to Stop being Clever

Last night I was sitting in the living room playing Angry Birds. Delilah kept coming up to me with toys, telling me a little something about each one. It was non-stop, one right after another. Finally I said, “and why are we doing an inventory of all your toys?” She looked down at the heart-shaped comb she was holding and said, “I just want your attention.” I was struck with the realization that I’m a bad daddy. I immediately turned off the game and engaged in conversation with her. I’m just glad she is clear-headed enough to tell me what was really going on. With that kind of honesty and insight I feel it’s unlikely she is going to act out in dangerous ways. I can pray, anyway. I love that kid so much.

We look at ourselves, and we see only the surface, we see only what we look like, particularly our flaws, the things we wish were different about ourselves. We often don’t think that, when others look at us, they see past our appearance alone and they see all the things that define us as who we are. All of our personality, our history, our mannerisms, they all add up to the person they’ve come to know. We look in the mirror and we see, for example, our hair. Then we see that it’s us with the horrible hair. Others see first that it’s us, then they may notice the hair. We take for granted that we are going to see ourselves in the mirror, while others don’t know if they will see us at all in any given day, so when they do, the first thing they think is that, oh, you’re here. With that comes many of the thoughts and feelings they have about you, what they might say to you, what they might ask you, what they want to show you. We skip all of that and go straight to judging ourselves based on