Cliches to Live By

Blog #11 (Only 1075 to go!): Clichés to Live By!
      This could make some of you sick with envy, but I must tell you that for 25 years, everyday I drove Frank Raispis to, and frequently from, school. I also have to tell you that it was all that you might imagine.
     There was a lot of casual conversation, laughing as we relived old Jack Benny radio programs, reflected on events at school, and, not infrequently, I'd ask him about the classical derivations of words. For those of you who know Frank well, you’ll also recognize one of his habits. He will start an answer, then stop talking as he formulates the rest of his thoughts. For my part, I would pretty-much stop breathing until he started to talk again. More than once, I nearly drove off of the road, light-headed from lack of oxygen.
     But I digress. One of the great joys of the experience for me was getting a better understanding of what Frank’s personal philosophy was. It was never presented as a formal tenet. He would simply state an opinion or respond to a question about how he felt on some issue, school related or just life in general.
     On one occasion, he was reacting negatively about something, then suddenly stopped and scolded himself for failing to view another person's motive in a positive light. Over that time, as we chatted, I compiled a list of “Clichés to Live By”, a collection of principles that we thought would be good to follow. Frank would give me his assessment of some life's-lesson, and I would rephrase it and write it down.

          Rule # 1: Assume the best motive behind each person's action.

     I must admit that, while rule #1 is not as easy at it might seem, I do try to follow it. I also recognize its counter-part which says, "No matter how cynical I get (about society), I never seem to be able to keep up."
     One more Frank story; one that I've told before: Many years ago, Fr. Meirose, Fr. Menke, and I were passing a place in northern Wisconsin where Frank was vacationing*. We stopped in to visit him for a few days. One of the mornings, I saw Frank picking berries for a dessert treat he was preparing for that evening. I asked him what he was thinking about as he went through that monotonous task. He said, as he picked each berry, he wondered whether that particular berry would be the best berry he'd pick that day.      Then he'd move to the next berry with the same thought.
     I was fascinated that a scholar and award-winning educator would be thinking about the quality of each individual berry as he picked them, but I set the thought aside as just "interesting". Upon further reflection, I realize how critical that "skill" is in Frank's make-up, and how hard it is for some people (me) to master. In theater, I think it's called "being in the moment". Again, not as easy as it seems.
             *For those of you old enough, it was an island owned by Ernie Schmidt's       family. Ernie was a math teacher at Ignatius from the mid-40's until he died
on the first day of school in 1966.