Longacre: What and who you don’t know can hurt you

There is a famous story of a blind man coming across an elephant and trying, with all his other senses, to describe what he was “seeing.” Luckily, in my retelling, a man with sight pulled him away just in time.

Let’s begin by acknowledging that not everyone is easy to know. In fact, there are some who leave us shaking our heads in bewilderment as we mumble: “Who knew?” Murder-mysteries are full of such people, often leading us to point to the least likely suspect, in full expectation that he (or she) will end up being the guilty one.

In normal life, we fathers of daughters sometimes ask some form of “How well do you actually know this man? You’ve only known him a short time.” How many of us, at one time or another, have listened to someone we hardly know push some idea or product and, despite our innate skepticism and determinism not to be duped, have become convinced that this person had the right answers and was telling the truth when they said that just a very small donation or its equivalent would change our lives for the better?

Let’s pause here, as we reach into our figurative pocket. What kind of intervention would it take, right now, for us to change our mind or at least reconsider? We have, I would guess, all been here in one form or another. Some of us were lucky enough to have had a friend or family member figuratively “pull us away” before it was too late. Sadly, many others were not.

Would it have mattered if we knew that the welfare of the whole country depended on our making the right decision? Just asking.

Frederick Longacre

Hockessin

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