"I used to think I had some very wise things to say." Geraldine had been telling me about her work with inner city, substance-abusing, pregnant minority women. One had six children by five different men. She kept getting pregnant because she was hooking, trying to make enough money to get drugs. If she didn't have drugs she'd have to deal with the abuse in her childhood, which haunted her day and night with posttraumatic symptoms. There was no money for help, no way out of her neighbhorhood, no way to manage. Only despair, pregnant women in all directions, johns on the streets, and two-timing lovers who either beat them, sponged off them and molested their kids. She was only trying to survive.

Geraldine didn't grow up in anything remotely related to the way her therapy clients had. It was hard to even understand the logic of why they did what they did. She couldn't imagine why they kept getting pregnant, used drugs so much, and never left the ghetto. But when she finally grasped that they were trapped and didn't have a vision of anything different except what they were caught in, she was speechless. They were doing the best they knew how and her wisdom was irrelevant.

It reminds me of being a camp counselor. Having breakfast with seven giggling nine year-olds at a log table in the camp dining room, I watched something that was logical but that left me surprised. We were having hard boiled eggs, cereal, pancakes, and fruit salad. One little girl tried to cut into her egg with her fork, only to have it flip off her plate and onto the floor. It had bounced across the wooden floor that looked like it had been mopped with a bucket of mud. "Yuck!" "Ick!" "Gross!" little girls squealed, peering over the edge of the table at the egg, that had come to rest against the main support post in the dining room.
The little freckled egg owner matter of factly got down from the table, walked over to the egg and carried it back to the table.
"Yick! What are you going to do with it?" one little girl gasped.
"Watch," she said. "This is easy."
Taking the egg in one hand, she filled her glass halfway with milk. In went the egg and she swirled it around inside the glass. Using her fork, she spiked the egg and brought it out of the glass onto her plate. "See?" She looked around at the admiring girls. "Now it's clean."
Her little friends were delighted. One started to "wash" her English muffin in her milk.
I was fifteen years old and I was speechless. The girl's logic was great, and what I knew about going over to the sink, washing the egg and coming back again, seemed awkward and unnecessary.
"I don't think you should do that," I started to say in a commanding way. The little girls ignored me and went on with their breakfast, swilling breakfast sausages and pancake bits in their glasses of milk. I poured a new glass of milk to replace the egg wash glass and sat down, silent. What I knew didn't make sensse right there, just then.
I used to think I had some very wise things to say, too.

Geraldine and I talked for several minutes about how the women's logic made sense, given their context. Although they looked like down and out addicts, there were some good qualities and clear logic that wouldn't typically be visible to outsiders. They were generous with one another, sharing cigarettes, watching each other's babies, "watching the back" of each other. One girl gave a diaper to another woman who didn't have anything for her baby. It was clear that she had taken this woman under her wing and was trying to watch out for her. The context and meaning was just very, very different from anything Geraldine or I would know.

There are some things we can't weigh in on, shouldn't weigh in on. And there are some situations in which we can ask questions, introduce new ideas, respectfully explore. But always from a position of not knowing. There is too much in the lives of others that comes from a place that is unlike our own experience, that when we assert that something they do, feel, or think should be the way we do, feel, or think about it, then is when we have overstepped our bounds. We are interpretive bullies who would be better off being quiet.

When I was a teenager and struggling internally about what to do with my musical future, people used to tell me that if I just did X, Y, and Z, then I would have success, happiness, and a bright future. But they had no idea of my context and how impossible any of their suggestions would be for me to attempt. So, much of their wisdom was useless to me. In later years, as a client in therapy, the therapist began to tell me what I should do, how I should feel, and what choices would be best for me. Then she told me how I really felt and what my inner needs were. I was speechless, because she had reduced me and my context down to a story line that she could understand but that had no relevance to me. She wasn't interested in my framework. I never went back.

I love the comment that Job (in the Bible) said after God swooped down and put him in the hot seat. "I thought I knew, but now I put my hand over my mouth." He realized that he had been rash and that his wisdom didn't shed much light on God's actions or God's ways. After another chapter of questions, he said, "Now I detest myself and repent in dust and ashes." You can't be more repentant than that.

Most of us would do well to put our hand over our mouth and listen rather than blurt out "wisdom" that makes sense to us but not to others. Being tentative and speaking from a not-knowing stance can open doors for communication that don't come from asserting our own beliefs in foreign places.