MISCONCEPTIONS

Ah, people. We're real pieces of work, aren't we? Complex creatures, every one, and full of all sorts of notions. We're the top of the food chain around here, the dominant species on a planet teeming with life of every description. Of all the many creatures on this earth, it is only people who can speak, build skyscrapers, play the piano or even visit the moon if we feel like it. We feel pretty good about our humanity, sometimes to the point of getting a little carried away with ourselves and claiming vast powers we simply do not possess and suffering from common misconceptions. And we figure it's more than our opposable thumbs that have produced our greatness, otherwise we'd be siting next to gorillas and chimps in physics class. That's not the case. It's not easy being humble when you're a human being, but it's worth a shot. Consider:

Before you declare yourself the new Dog Whisperer because Fluffy loves you so much, know this: dogs lick your skin only for the salt. Fluffy loves you even more when you're very sweaty.

When you gaze upon the great monuments and gleaming cities wrought by the hand of man, remember you are only one tsunami or devastating earthquake away from gazing at a field of battered rubble. So much for being masters of all we survey. The earth itself is the real food chain topper.

One of the greatest construction projects of all time and the only man-made object visible from space, The Great Wall of China never served its intended purpose. It was built to keep out invaders and didn't work. Ever. And yet Chinese emperors kept building the damned thing for over a thousand years, even though time and time again it was proven to be a miserable failure. There is a point at which tenacity becomes obsession. You'd think we'd recognize this and alter our futile behavior after a couple of hundred years. Maybe it's just not in the makeup of an emperor to take a few moments to think things through, maybe admit a small miscalculation in judgement. You think?

There's a flip side to this misconception by a renowned leader. Abraham Lincoln was perhaps our greatest, yet our most humble president. After giving one the the finest speeches ever delivered, The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln thought he blew it, and that his speech was neither long enough nor grand enough for the occasion of the commemoration of the battlefield where the Union was saved. He was depressed and felt he had let his nation down at a pivotal moment. Written on a train as he travelled from Washington D.C., it is a beautiful and concise piece of oratory that has become one of the most quoted speeches ever in spite of its brevity. In a bare couple of paragraphs Mr. Lincoln majestically summed up the struggles of a nation like no other before it being reborn and rededicated to government of the people, by the people and for the people. With characteristic humility, he also included a line that says "the world will little note, or long remember what we say here." That was true only of the other orators who spoke that day. Lincoln's words are still with us.

Many of us today feel like modern technical wizards, what with our Blackberries, computers, GPS tracking devices and tiny little boxes that store 15,000 songs, or about 14,000 more than you are familiar with. Our little self-deception gets exposed when any of these things malfunction and we realize we have no idea how they really work, never mind how to fix them. Then you call in some arrogant young geek barely out of school who patronizes you like you're the president of the Flat Earth Society, who fixes your device in a matter of minutes. After that it takes at least a couple of weeks to feel like Invincible Techno Wizard again.

Then there's the misconceptions attributed by others to an individual who gladly joins the illusion and assumes he is in possession of the godly powers attributed to him, usually to the point of the ridiculous. Take this Rush Limbaugh guy, an intellectually challenged conservative radio talk show host. Behind-the-scenes political operatives in the Democratic party declared him to be the intellectual force behind the Republican party, not really expecting anybody to buy it but figuring their job is to keep the opposition in disarray. Well, not only did the Republicans fall for it, but also Limbaugh himself, who has ratcheted up his legendary arrogance tenfold and has started making speeches and pronouncement like Moses after meeting God. And the Republican party is in such a mess that even the Republican National Chairman, Michael Steele, was forced to apologize to Rush for pointing out the obvious when he duly noted that Limbaugh is an ignorant, nasty, disruptive and drug addicted clown that could only hurt their chances of regaining power anytime soon. Delighted Democrats are enjoying this gift of Republican self-delusion even more than the political Godsend that was Sarah Palin. They hope the deification of this fat, ornery fool continues for a long, long time.

Ah, our beloved misconceptions! Who among us is without our own special set of them? Don't our mirrors tell us all how wonderful we look? Don't we all feel that we have a special insight to living life that could benefit everybody else? Aren't we all the best lovers and the most attentive of companions? And when we have children, are we not all paragons of perfect parenthood? To be human is to be immortal in many ways, because by our connections from the past and into the future we continue to touch and inform one another. If the message you are sending isn't exactly the one everyone else is receiving, well, these things happen. For the vast majority of us, though, enough of who you really are will shine through your self-delusion and your innate goodness, wisdom and generous spirit will be passed along. So will a lot of your misconceptions, but that's for another generation to discover and deal with. Or not...