You see, I am of the variety that thinks very little in this life is necessary and almost all of it is pomp and circumstance. I wouldn't call myself an anarchist by any means, but you could say that I have some of their blood in my veins, just a much more subdued version of it. Let me elaborate.
There are a few things that are great examples. First off, the tie. The tie is one of the greatest examples of things that I hate in this life. Now granted, I wear a tie every Sunday, at the very least, during a week. I am guessing that pretty soon I will start wearing one to work every day. But why! It serves absolutely no purpose. I suppose it covers up our buttons, but I don't think revealed buttons is a very big deal. It does not keep us warm, it just serves no purpose. It serves no purpose, except to fulfill a convention that has been established.
The second thing is praying with a hat on. In the New Testament they prayed with their hats on. They said it was a shame to pray with their hat off, or have your head uncovered when you pray. Yet now it is the opposite. There wasn't another change like the Law of Moses or anything like that to change it. It was just people in those early days deciding that they wanted to do something different and take their hat off when they pray. And because they did that we now have the convention of praying with it off. But the rub is that for it to be the convention now to pray with our hat off, somebody had to go against the system then. Someone had to take their hat off and cause gasps around the room. So when Kylee asks me to take my hat off when I pray and I refuse she says I should take it off just to be polite. But that is the problem, it is polite now because someone wasn't polite then! What if I am the person who needs to do it now.
That could be when the pride sneaks in. Why do I think I need to be the one who bucks all these trends and traditions. I also hate it when we are supposed to double space the introductory stuff on a paper, like name and date stuff. Kylee asked if I would get points taken off my paper and single space that part just to make a point, to which I responded in the affirmative. I absolutely would get points taken away. She said that is prideful. It may be.
But there is a sacrificial part to this question also (I hope that word--sacrificial--isn't too loaded to use in common usage!). For me to be the person to buck the trends and traditions I will have to go without some things. For instance, if you go without a tie to an interview chances are you will not be landing the job. So do I have to be the sacrificial lamb for change? I don't know. My teacher says that some things are not important enough to try to change the way they are, like the tie. But I said that is my point exactly--if it isn't important why don't we just do without it? Should I be the one that starts it. Maybe I could be the beginning of getting rid of a useless article of clothing.
This may seem like a small thing to you readers, but it is something that I struggle with almost daily. When do we go against norms and traditions to institute change? I hope someone has some profound insight into this problem I face, because I don't have a clue what to do about it. I have seen many teachers who seem to face the same dilemma.
It is like today. Today I wanted to wear basketball shorts. I can honestly say that in cold weather my legs don't really get cold. So I decided I was going to wear shorts. I almost didn't wear them because it is dressing down too much and because people would give me the "you are not tough as you think you are" look or the "you are crazy" look. I decided that was stupid, what do I care what others think, and I wore them. It could possibly have been prideful to declare that I don't care what others think (we all do), but I did it anyway and wore my shorts. They were very comfortable.
What do you guys think?
