June 25, 2015
I’m in the prime of my life. I’m supposed to be smarter and wiser and improve with age. What do they say, “aging like fine wine”?
Sure, I’m still stuck in the ways that I have grown accustomed to when I was a child. My parents instilled my values like I would hard wire a stereo system in my car as a child. Those values morphed into my beliefs, which I learned from trial and error and common sense.
Common sense is really all one needs, though, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t rob banks. That’s common sense because we should know that robbing a bank will lead to jail, and jail, from what we see in the movies, is a horrible place.
I should realize eating this donut is terrible for me. For crying out loud, it’s dough made in a bowl of flour, fried in oil, and sprinkled or stuffed with artificial sweets. Common sense tells me to avoid it, but the other common sense tells me not to be an idiot. Of course, eat it. This common sense is so hard to deal with at times.
Common sense tells me not to jump off high places without a parachute. Common sense also tells me that unless the plane crashes, don’t jump out of the perfect airplane. Here, common sense breaks even. Because jumping out of a plane with a parachute is one person’s nightmare and another’s adrenaline rush.
Can common sense be learned? I hope my two sons learn common sense. But I don’t want them to understand common sense that something is hot by touching it. I like that common sense to derive from me telling them if it’s hot or if they feel the heat radiating from fire or heating element.
Sometimes, I think that now, at ages 5 and 7, they haven’t learned common sense. Jumping in a pool with your good clothes on doesn’t make sense. Jumping in a pool on a hot, humid Florida day makes perfect sense. If I was mad and jokingly said to them, “Ah, go jump in a lake,” and they actually did, I should be worried that they lacked common sense.
Using a bike helmet at their age is good common sense and outstanding practice, but as a child, I never wore a helmet, and even though now that wouldn’t make sense, it did at that time. So, the good thing is that we can learn common sense, such as using car seats and seatbelts. They save lives, and although they were not used back in the 60s and 70s, it is common sense to use them now.
It’s good to know now that I’m in the prime of my life and “aging like fine wine” that I have common sense. Common sense should be part of the 5 human senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. As my kids age, I hope they will have common sense that coincides with their age. And hopefully, they will have the common sense to care for me when I’m old and gray.
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