WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME!

Today's researchers are intent upon figuring us out. You know, that ancient quest that has challenged such pairings as teacher & student...employer & employee...Democrat & Republican...and most especially men & women. What makes us tick? And why are their ticks so hard to coordinate with my ticks?

At one time the quest was the subject of great thinkers like Aristotle, Aurelius, Augustine, and Descartes. Lately it is the subject of behavioral psychologists like Canadian Karina Schumann and University of Michigan's Jennifer Crocker. Schumann reports: "If we can distinguish how the sexes apologize to one another, men generally find less to apologize for, because they think they've done fewer things wrong." In Crocker's research on the need for praise: "I was shocked to learn that today's desire to feel worthy and valuable -- among both men and women -- trumps almost any other pleasure activity you can imagine."

What's so interesting is that we find ourselves so interesting. Today, we spend enormous blocks of money and time to study ourselves by the numbers. Then go off writing how-to handbooks or scheduling speaking tours to share these numbers with audiences anxious to learn why we are the way we are.

Worthy pursuits, all. And yet, the numbers always seem to be changing. Suggesting that human nature may be more than statistics-deep. Those thinkers who think most deeply about the human condition -- theologians, novelists, philosophers, playwrights -- are repeatedly sharing with us core truths that have persisted in our species long before anyone thought about taking the time and money to form a research study.

Usually these truths have come from no farther away than the mouths of a family elder or a community wise one in inconspicuous settings like the family dinner, the local coffee shop, the corner pub, and the Sunday pulpit. What they had to offer from their years of living were generally referred to simply as "tales" and "sayings." Giggled at by the listening children, indulged in by the young, but quietly recognized by the elderly.

You know how reporters interview the neighbors when someone in the community has just been arrested for some horrific mass-killing or terrorist-act? What do the interviewees usually say? "He was always such a quiet person, nice to my kids, never any trouble..."

Ever since Adam and Eve got into that mess in the Garden, people just haven't quite got the hang of understanding one another. Our feelings and fears; our dreams and ambitions. Often because we mask them. Even more often because we don't completely understand them. I'm not sure how Aristotle or Crocker would advise us on this matter, but a good friend once offered this simple saying: "Just remember, you're always looking from your inside to the other person's outside...."

Don't know about you, but I suspect this disconnect has been the source of most problems between people and nations ever since we messed things up way back in that Garden...