Context without pretext is no text

The signs are everywhere right now. “Put down your phones and drive. Don’t drive and text. August 1, hands free.  Hands free and live.”

For a total stranger coming from another world this would make no sense.  In a foreign country where they don’t drive as we do, it would make no sense.  They don’t have phones, they don’t see people walking into poles while texting and hurting others because they had their phone in their hand while driving.  There is no previous experience to solidify in their hearts and minds what it means. That’s what we call pretext. The content of the statement without understanding the background means there is no understanding.

We as people, humans, adults, seemingly intelligent people, jump into the lake before we reach the waters edge. We read. read into or think we know and so we share with the world our ignorance. Had we stopped, before our emotions were off the wall, and said, “Hmmm, this doesn’t make sense. Perhaps there is something I don’t know and could understand before I get all heated up and out of control demanding things of people,”

However, we are people and we jump. We jump to conclusions, we jump to make statements and we jump to accuse before we have the pretext as to what is happening. It’s so much easier to keep a train from rolling when it’s stopped and the brakes are on.  It’s like that in our minds. Once we begin running down the rabbit trail of think or assume, it’s really hard to come back to the path and just keep walking.

I judged a fair yesterday in Freeborn County, which is about an hour from home.  Most of the kids who presented their projects knew what was happening and how things went. One little cute girl had done a  very good project on Spruce Trees. She had her pictures of the spruce trees surrounding her house as a windbreak, had the cutting of the tree, had pine cones, had facts. As we talked I casually asked her what the pine cones are for. She didn’t know. She kind of began making things up on the spot! So Human. If we don’t know we begin to pretend we know and before long we have created a whole new species of tree because we didn’t know the pretext… didn’t know what came first.
I did what any good judge would do. I said, “let’s google it.” I let her read that pine cones are where the seeds are for the tree. The Pine cone protects the seed.

She went on her way feeling very smart. I went on with the judging glad we had stopped a potential train from running down hill. When we don’t understand things we begin making up answers to the questions that were never asked!

So, if you don’t understand what someone says, there could be a pretext waiting for you to discover. Once you have the pretext, the context will probably make a lot more sense!