For Wilshire Baptist Church
It was good to be back at church on Sunday, and as expected, along with the well wishes and commiserations about having my arm in a sling, a few people asked how I injured myself. The answer is I didn’t; a bone spur tore my rotator tendon. I had surgery to remove the spur and stitch the tendon.
“Just one of the joys of getting older,” I said.
“And what caused the bone spur in your shoulder?”
“A lifetime of shrugging.”
That’s my tongue-in-cheek response. But if there is a hint of truth in most humor, then there is some truth in my response. Not that shrugging with my shoulders created the bone spur or the tear, but that I’ve been a shrugger most of my life. As in: “Hey Jeff, what do you think about this?” Shrug. “Which do you like best?” Shrug. “What sounds good for supper?” Shrug. “What movie do you want to see.” Shrug.
My guess is my shrugging has irritated family and friends much more than my shoulder. It puts pressure on them to make the decision, and stretched to the extreme, it might be perceived that I don’t care. The truth is that I do care – very much so – about the big, important things in life. But if I could add a phrase to Ecclesiastes 3, it would be, “There is a time for hand-waving opinion, and a time for shrugging.”
I don’t need to have my way all the time on the little things. I’m content to defer to others and let them choose. Not to catch them later in a bad decision or to say, “I told you so,” but simply to let them have the say — to let them have the moment.
I’ve been in creative meetings in my career where people have argued intensely over the turn of a phrase, the placement of a photo, the color of a background. Sure, I’ve often had a personal preference, but I’ve chosen not to get down in the dirt about it. I had a boss who would call me in to review a writing project, and he’d say, “Don’t you think it would be better like this?” and he’d show me his revision. My snarky internal answer would be, “No, I wrote it that way because that’s actually what I liked best,” but externally I would answer, “That works fine too,” because it wasn’t my personal project and it achieved the intended result. On the other hand, if it was a book with my name on the cover, there’d be no shrugging; I’d be waving my hand in the air saying, “Just a minute now, hear me out.”
There are some things where shrugging just doesn’t cut it, not even for me. That’s especially true when it comes to the well-being of those that I love. That same boss I mentioned earlier got a piece of my mind when something more personal was at stake. So did a landlord who didn’t respond correctly to a home burglary. And an oncologist who sent us on a wild goose chase to Houston.
At the community level, matters of health, safety, education, hunger, poverty, justice and equity require more than shrugs too. They require comprehensive but thoughtful action, and that in turn requires civil discussion, negotiation and compromise. But sometimes, that compromise needs to come in the form of a magnanimous shrug that says, “That’s fine; that’ll work too. Let’s get this done.”
I think a lot of our public discord is less about who has the right or best answer than it is about who gets to have the last word; it is driven by ego and personal benefit. If we were more willing to share the platform, share the spotlight, share the credit, share the success, we would have more actual success; we would solve more problems, help more people, heal more hurts, be better neighbors, enjoy more peace.
Any thoughts on that? Any shrugs?