The Ability To Be Reasonable. Have We Lost It?
Imagine yourself at a baseball game and the ball comes flying off the bat toward your head. Instinctively, I hope, you react quickly enough to move out of the way.
Do you only have this reflex because you have already once been hit in the face with a baseball? Of course not. We learn things throughout life, such as the pain that results when a hard object (baseball) means a soft target (your face).
Our ability to be reasonable is mostly instinctive, as is our reaction to say, touching a hot service, or avoiding a line drive off a bat. We practice these reflexes throughout our lives, dodging one dangerous, potentially hurtful situation after another. But do we take the time to learn and respect the concept of being reasonable? Most of us do not.
For the majority of my life, I’ve driven down the center of the road, never fully committing to either lane. When I was younger, I felt that this was a weakness of mine, a lack of self-confidence to commit.
I was frustrated as to why I couldn’t take a rigid, unequivocal stance on major viewpoints, issues and current events. I drove down the center line looking at both sides. I felt surrounded by people who drew a hard line, preached their viewpoint, and gave no room for their beliefs to adjust.
I often wondered, how can they be so confident that their belief is the right one at the moment, or right 100% of the time? I often admired the “confidence” others had by sticking to their views and not wavering.
Emotional intelligence is a direct contributor to our ability to be reasonable. According to National Geographic Magazine, emotional intelligence is “the ability to monitor and manage your emotions and have an awareness of others and the competency to interact.”
Emotional intelligence involves four pillars:
Accurately perceiving others’ emotions
Understanding one’s own emotions
Using one’s emotions to help with decision-making
Regulating one’s emotions
What if the reasonable path travels directly down the center of the road? I often question why each of us needs to “take a stand,” so hard to the right, or so hard to the left. Why can’t we walk in the middle of the road and take each instance, decision, dilemma, and turn in life for what that specific “thing” is? Can’t we be reasonable before we feel the need to forever stand on one side of that double line or the other?
The ability to be reasonable is a diminishing skill. It takes constant conscious thought to be able to not only use it but use it without even thinking about it. It’s a conscious and daily grind, but so important to train our brains to use the skill of reasonability like a reflex.