No Such Thing as Common Sense

Ever wonder why you have so many differences with someone?  Why you just can’t seem to see eye to eye??

I was driving the other day and needed to adjust my side mirrors so I could see properly.  I marveled as I do many times at how different my point of view is from my husband’s.  I keep thinking his eyes must be set wider apart or something and—“Gee, HOW does he see with these mirrors tilted so far out??” 

I continue to think about how different we are.  I mean, as far as we know, we have all the same organs—two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, one nose, a heart, a brain, but still we’re so different!

Then, I remember that a physical therapist I once worked with said that she had to dissect three cadavers during her graduate studies, and each body looked very different.  We may have the same anatomy, the same parts, and yet, the sizes, the form, even some of the placement may differ just a bit—maybe enough to create a vast difference in our perceptions of the world. 

When my grandma was in her 90s and battling stomach cancer, doctors discovered that she only had one kidney.  All her life, no one knew this, but she had one less kidney than everyone else.  My grandmother never knew this herself; yet, it probably had effects on her that she never understood. 

We can never know what another person’s physical sensations are, what their thoughts are, what their feelings are, which sight or smell or sound might be triggering a memory that very moment—pleasant or unpleasant.  Oftentimes, they might not even be aware of it themselves!

I’m always wondering why my hubs does the things he does.  “Come on!” I think.  “This is common sense!”

  But, it keeps dawning on me: apparently, common sense is not so common.  In fact, there might not be any such thing at all!

For example, to my perception, the headlights of the car behind us are perfectly fine, at a normal brightness; to my husband’s more sensitive eyes, they are piercing: “Ugh!  That hurts!” he exclaims every time a truck has its lights shining into our rear-view mirror.

The slightest scent makes my nose twitch, and I can’t stand smells that stink to me.  Much to my surprise and chagrin, my husband’s usual response is: “What smell?”

Speaking of smells, to some people, cilantro is fragrant, mouth-watering, delightful; to others, it stinks and is to be avoided at all costs.  I can smell cilantro from what seems like a mile away, and I run the other direction!

Now, who’s to say which perception is reality?  Because of the varied levels of sensitivity in our five physical senses—my hubs’ heightened sense of sight and my heightened sense of smell—each of us receives the exact same stimuli but experiences them very differently.  See, this is because there is no such thing as “common sense.”  We all sense and perceive things in our own unique ways.  To Hubs, the light is, indeed, piercing.  To me, the smell is too strong. 

So, how can we ever accurately judge others’ experiences and sensitivities?  How can we ever say to someone else: “You’re just too sensitive!” or “You’re so INsensitive!”  Maybe their physical bodies are literally more or less sensitive than ours!  These varied perceptions can also lead to very different choices and decisions.  No wonder it’s hard for us to fully understand each other!  But that doesn’t necessarily keep us from accepting our differences.

How about a litany of other judgments we can make of others? 

“Why doesn’t that person have any manners?”  Maybe he didn’t have parents around to teach him manners as a child.  Who knows?  I often think I know, but I ultimately realize I don’t.

“Why is that person so mean?”  Maybe being harsh is a self-defense mechanism, a protective mechanism, from having been rejected countless times themselves.  Who knows?

Or “Why is that guy so stubborn? Why won’t he just do it?” Maybe he’s actually scared of doing it—whatever it may be, but he’s embarrassed to tell you that.  Who knows but God?

God made us each like snowflakes; He created countless snowflakes, yet every single one is unique and beautiful.  He made each of us, intricate in our details, one-of-a-kind—all humans but no two alike. 

And He is the only one who has the knowledge and right to judge any of us.  We cannot climb onto His throne and try to act as judge when we don’t have all the information.  Not only do we not fully know how another person is designed, we don’t know what they’ve experienced in their lives.  

We cannot judge another person until we have walked a lifetime in their shoes, their skin, their lungs, their heart, their spirit, their memories, the words they’ve heard echoing in their minds throughout their lives.   We’ll never know exactly what it feels like to be them because we don’t have their sensitivities, their past experiences, their perceptions, their traumas, their bodies, or their ancestors and families of origin.

Only God knows all this.  Only He has been there with that person every moment of their life, with every thought, every tear, every feeling, and every life experience.  As Creator and Life-Long Companion, only God has the knowledge to make an accurate judgment.

And God has made clear His judgment:  He deems each of us worthy of dying for no matter how badly we have sinned; no matter what’s been done to us and what we have done; no matter what others think of us or what we think of ourselves; no matter how we have used or not used what He has given us, God looks at us and loves us.  Leave the judgment to Him, for His mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:13) Maybe the only thing Jesus asks us to do is let Him show us how to love one another even in the midst of our differences.

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