Tuesday, June 16, 2009

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 7

#7 - "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
As adults, we seem to forget that children tend to take things very literally. When I was a little girl and my mom would say, "Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat," I would picture a dead cat, hanging upside down by a rope, mom standing there with a knife trying to decide which way to skin it this time. I never saw my mom skin a cat, but I was sure she must have. Otherwise, how would she know that there was more than one way to do it. I never said to my mom, "Why would you skin a cat?" Kids often don't ask about things they don't understand , and adults are often oblivious to their confusion.

Of course I eventually figured out that what mom was talking about was tolerance, and gal-howdy is this a big one. Of all of the one hundred things my mom taught me a million times, this may be the most important. I suspect that few would say that tolerance is bad, but many would say that when we don't stand up for what we believe, our life becomes a compromise.