Friday, May 16, 2008 Antalan: The know-it-all By Roger P. Antalan Dateline: IGaCoS
IT IS difficult to talk to or to deal with the know-it-all, proud and arrogant individual. Why? Because he is not going anywhere. He has seen everything and has been everywhere. As someone points out, he who sings his own praises is always a soloist. And nothing is so hard to do gracefully as getting down of one's high horse. The acerbic Mark Twain puts it this way: "A proud man is one who is waiting for a vacancy in the TRINITY." At the least, he is willing to serve God but only as His consultant.
How do you handle the haughty, or the snooty, or the braggart, or whatever name you call this type of the "high and the mighty"? It is not going to be easy. Sometimes we can use parables, short stories that illustrate a religious or moral point. Hopefully the parables will make some dent on their thick armor of pride and arrogance.
In the early 80s, the members of a well-known civic organization in Metro Manila decided to do something about a problematic member who was "Mayabang Talaga".
The club commissioned a respected member who had a good background in counseling to talk "nicely" to the confrere about his haughty behavior.
The approach to the problem looked simple. At first, the counselor told the members a story about two classmates from a girl's exclusive schools. They two met again after twenty years. After the initial excited greetings, they started to compare notes. Classmate 1 started by narrating that her dad gifted her with a trip around the world after graduation. Classmate 2 said; "Wonderful".
Classmate 1 continued to talk about her wedding of the year, and her wedding gift, a Mercedes Benz. A successful business was set up by her parents and it is flourishing. She has a wonderful husband and beautiful kids. She is very active in different Women's Civic Clubs. To all these narrations, Classmate 2 kept saying: "Wonderful." Then it was her turn. "What did you do after graduation?" Classmate 2 said: "Well, my dad sent me to a finishing school in Switzerland where we are taught to say 'Wonderful' when we really meant 'Bullshit'".
Then the counselor advised the group to use the story when the "mayabang" member made a pompous ass of himself. And so, every time he stood up and did his adversarial stunts, everybody shouted in chorus; "Wonderful". Eventually, the snooty member got the message and became a wonderful team member in the correct sense of the word. It was a "nice" approach.
The Holy Bible, however, warns us: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16.18. One stormy night, in a narrow sea corridor, the tog was so thick that visibility was almost zero. It looked like two ships were about to meet on a head-on collision. The captain of the big ship sent the first signal: "Move 200 degrees east." The other side answered: "You move 200 degrees east." The ship captain repeated the message and the answer was the same. As they were getting dangerously close, the ship's captain angrily radioed the other side: "Move at once. This is a destroyer." The other side answered back: "This is the lighthouse."
Someone once asked the famous conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein; "What is the most difficult instrument to play?" Immediately he answered; "Second fiddle." In reality, very few want to play second fiddle. As they say in sports: "Nobody remembers second." Take the story of the Lion, King of the Jungle. From time to time, the lion goes around the jungle to check if he is really and still is the No. 1. Every animal, he meets, he would ask them: "Who is the king of the Jungle?" The rabbit, the monkey, the deer, and the giraffe- all of them would bow low and answer: "Lion, you are the king of the jungle." After exacting due recognition from the others in the animal kingdom, the Lion came upon the elephant. "Elephant, who is the king of the jungle?" The elephant stared at the Lion, then tossed him up to his tusks with his long snout, whirled him around, and slammed the lion on the side of the mountain. When he recovered, the lion lamely said: "You don't have to get mad if you did not understand the question." Humirit pa.
Sometimes a brief and sharp repartee can bring down to earth the high and the mighty. Listen to this: Husband: "You are so beautiful and yet so dumb" Wife: "God maid me beautiful so you would marry me, and dumb so I would marry you."
A beautiful actress once proposed to George Bernard Shaw, who was not good-looking to say the least: "What if we got married, we will have a child with your brain and my beauty." Shaw responded: "Lady, I'm flattered. But what if our child will have your brain and my beauty."
The King of Belgium once went to visit the poor mining area. He brought with him money and material goods ready to give generously to the poor miners. When he arrived at the place, He immediately asked: "Is there anything you want from me?" The miners answered: Your highness, we only want one thing: Respect.
All of the above can be briefly summed up by this simple truth: The person who knows everything has a lot to learn.
