Only the most rigid and inflexible among us don’t ever make allowances. Some of us make more allowances than others. But we all make them. Here are the three examples that ran through my mind as I was using my string trimmer on the edges of my back yard mulch beds:
EXAMPLE NUMBER 1:
You are settling in to your seat for a four hour cross country flight when you notice a row of extremely loud, obnoxious blowhards sitting across the aisle. It’s four of them, all in their early 30’s and even though its only 8 am in the morning they are already harassing the flight attendant for bloody Mary’s. To make matters worse they are making rude and sexist remarks about every female passenger who walks past them. Imagining what your next four hours are going to be like, what do you do? I can’t speak for you but I would attempt to put a stop to this...like, this instant! First I would confront the idiots as politely as possible and if that didn’t work I would try my famous sarcasm and mockery. But the point is, I would at least try to do something about their abhorrent behavior.
But, suppose you’re getting on that flight and instead of semi-literate A-Holes, you discover that a young single Mom and her two out of control toddlers plop down across the aisle. You notice that in addition to the toddlers, the woman is holding an infant who begins to scream out her discontent. The thought of spending the next four hours next to this is just as disconcerting as the earlier group. So, what do you do? If you’re a decent human being you make allowances. You don’t complain to the flight attendant. You don’t confront the frantic mom and demand that she get her kids under control. I would like to think I would react like the man flying in first class a while ago who I read about. When he heard all the commotion of screaming babies back in coach he got up from his seat and walked back to find the single mom. He saw that she was in great distress so he introduced himself with a kind, understanding smile, then suggested that perhaps he could help with the infant. It seemed that as a brand new grandfather himself he had quite the knack of getting fussy babies to fall asleep. The exhausted mother, grateful for any help at that point handed her baby to the kind man with white hair and a beautiful silk tie along with a burb towel. After a five minute walk up and down the aisle of the plane, the baby was fast asleep. When the man returned to give the baby to his mother he found that she was asleep as well. So, he kept walking the aisle, not wanting to wake either of them. Everyone on the plane suddenly became invested in this beautiful moment of grace and humanity. In other words, everyone made allowances for the young mother.
EXAMPLE NUMBER 2:
You live in a wonderful neighborhood and you love your home. Then one day some new neighbors move in. They are a middle aged couple with no children and no pets and seem nice enough, but it takes no time at all for you to discover that they are both slobs. Within weeks of moving in they have transformed their yard into what looks like a bomb went off in the middle of a yard sale. Its an epic eyesore and the entire neighborhood notices. Soon complaints are made to the Home Owners association and the battle eventually gets joined by your new neighbor’s contentious lawyer who claims that their third world mess is an expression of their free speech rights.
But, suppose instead that your new neighbors are a young couple with three young kids all under the age of 10. They are all adorable and full of life and unlike many kids their age, they spend every spare moment outside doing the same things you did when you were a kid. Before long, their yard is strewn with bikes, balls, games, stuffed animals etc etc...the place always looks like every kid in the county just had a sleep over! So, what do you do? You make allowances. You don’t fuss at them to clean up their yard. You don’t call the Home Owners Association. They’re kids doing kid things. Instead, you lean into it. You learn to love them AND their stuff. They end up loving you in return.
EXAMPLE NUMBER 3:
You’re at church on Sunday morning in your familiar seat when you notice an odd sight. A man has just entered the sanctuary dressed in filthy clothes, smelling of whisky and rotten fish. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair dirty and disheveled. He looks like he’s at the end of his rope and about as out of place as Bernie Sanders at a Chamber of Commerce picnic. If this man, after closer inspection, turns out to be your senior pastor, your church is in heap big trouble.
But, suppose that the man is just a guy at the end of his rope who has never set foot in a church before and out of desperation has walked into yours? What do you do? Hopefully, you make allowances. You don’t tell the guy that he needs to clean up and buy some decent clothes and try again next week. You maybe even ask him to sit beside you. Who knows what this guy has gone through. So, you make allowances.
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As I’m cutting the grass all of this is going through my head. There were plenty other examples...we make allowances for disabled people by building ramps, we make allowances for kids who don’t speak English in school by using English as a second language tools to help them along. When we see old ladies struggling with revolving doors, we stop what we are doing to see to it that she gets through. We make allowances all the time. Only, in America we never seem to make allowances anymore when it comes to politics or race. Even writing about it has become risky. You can actually lose friends over a political opinion these day. But its even worse with race. For example...
Nobody likes Affirmative Action. Seriously, nobody. Even those who have benefitted from it always know that everyone around them knows they were a quota hire and probably got the job over a more qualified candidate. The pressure of that can’t be a lot of fun. The reason we don’t like it is that we prefer to think that we live in a merit-based society. We certainly hope that the guy who designed the bridge we are driving over wasn’t a quota hire!! But, anyone who has a basic understanding of history acknowledges that for many many years blacks and other minorities were discriminated against in hiring practices in every industry imaginable. The deleterious effects of those years of exclusion are still felt by many minorities today. As I understand it, Affirmative Action essentially was an attempt to make allowances for the injuries of the past by giving those in the present a leg up. Although I think it was a bad program which has probably done at least as much harm as good, I am in total agreement with the idea behind it...making allowances. I get it and if Affirmative Action has flaws, I say fix them or try something new.
With regards to politics we have become a nation where compromise has somehow been transformed into a character flaw. Anyone who proposes to find some sort of common ground across our political divides is accused of being a sell-out. This is largely a result of the demonization of the Left by the Right and the Right by the Left. It’s been going on for years and it has to stop or we will end up killing ourselves as a nation. As a conservative, libertarian man I naturally recoil from those who propose the empowerment of government to solve all of our ills. But cannot I make allowance for the fact that those on the Left see things like Social Security and Medicare as great achievements for the betterment of life in America. Because of these successes, its only natural that they would lean towards government solutions. It doesn’t mean that they want to enslave the country and send us all to reeducation camps. Cannot those on the left make allowances for the fact that conservatives and libertarians have good historical reasons for being suspicious of centralized power and that deficit spending and endless stacks of government debt might not be a viable option for our grandchildren? It doesn’t mean we hate poor people and don’t want paved streets. Can we not try to understand and empathize with the foundational motivating principles of each side and use the best of both to forge a middle way? If so, we can only do so if we all...make allowances.
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