Common Sense

I recently saw a news report regarding a poll on common sense vs. specialized or formal knowledge, and how much people favored one or the other as having the most value. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I highly value common sense, but every time I hear this term used, it makes me think of a gentleman I knew who saw himself as, for lack of a better term, the “guru of common sense.” Ultimately, I realized he was quite wrong in his self-granted title, and further found that it doesn’t matter what we personally think or don’t think about our virtues; it only matters what are virtues are.

I met this man about 30 years ago. He was, at the time, in his mid-fifties and had just recently had a major heart attack. I couldn’t have known him more than five minutes before he started telling me, with great enthusiasm, all about common sense. He also went on to discuss how most people lacked it.

One of the stories he recounted nearly every time I saw him was about how his neighbor would fail to service his riding lawn mower–in particular, changing its oil–and that, about every other year, the neighbor had to purchase a new lawn mower.  He then went on to discuss his own lawn mower-servicing regime and how many times per summer he changed the oil.

Please understand this wasn’t just a passing reference to his neighbor, but a wholehearted, and complete renouncement of his neighbor, and a proclamation about himself and the great job he was personally doing in taking care of his lawn mower. This was akin to a pronouncement of moral superiority. It was really quite an odd conversation, especially given that he seemed to consider his neighbor a friend. 

Again, please don’t get me wrong; it is clearly an exercise of common sense to service your lawn mower as well as to take care of all your other possessions. This speaks to the heart of my story. You see, this gentleman I am writing about, had smoked tobacco from an early age, and he believed that smoking was part of being a man. In fact, in many of our conversations, he made it abundantly clear that he did not consider me a true man because I didn’t smoke.

Despite his major heart attack, the doctor’s instructions to quit, and all the available information on the bad effects of smoking, he refused to stop. I remember quietly thinking every time he told me the lawn mower story, that my friend was really missing the point. For while, his neighbor seemingly refused to service his mower, he could nonetheless always purchase a new mower. My friend, however, could not purchase a new life, once it had been used up by smoking.

I would have perhaps felt different if he had said, “It’s just so hard to quit smoking,” or, “Smoking has such a hold on me,” or, “Don’t ever smoke,“  or even said, “ I just love smoking,” but instead, he only mocked the doctor’s instructions and rejected the information on the proven health risks of smoking, as the statement of some overly educated,  know-nothing.

In the end, I realized that, at least to me, it seemed a lot more commonly sensible to service or take care of the property with the most value, or that would be the most difficult to replace. I ultimately concluded that, if my friend lacked the common sense to see this glaring lesson, then he really didn’t have any common sense at all.

This gentleman died about 10 years ago. As for his beloved mower, it was sold at his estate sale for the princely sum of $200.00.