Reconsider That First Impression

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Mother Nature surprised us this weekend with the season's first legitimate snowfall, received joyfully by the skiers, ice skaters and snow tubers that come to Sugar Mountain this time of year. I am sitting here on a beautiful Sunday morning looking out the window at what can only be described as a winter wonderland. In my lap is the book I'm currently reading, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.  I've just finished a couple of paragraphs that I feel compelled to share with you right now while their meaning is fresh on my mind.  They succinctly and quite poetically define one of man's worst habits - that of judging another based upon a first impression.

Why is that so bad, you might ask?  And I would answer - because if you preempt getting to fully know someone, you will, more than likely, miss out on a great opportunity to broaden your own life.
 
Let me give you a little context on the story by Towles.  It's about Russian Count Alexander Rostov who, in 1922, is convicted by the Bolsheviks of being an unrepentant aristocrat.  His sentence is lifelong house arrest in the Metropol Hotel, located across from the Kremlin in Moscow.  These reduced circumstances create surprising opportunities for him to observe those who frequent the hotel and draw both introspection and perspective that he might not have ever realized before.

In the scene from which I've drawn today's inspiration, the Count encounters actress Anna Urbanova in a whirlwind first meeting that causes him to form an opinion of her that is most unflattering.  A day later, she sends him an invitation which reads - "Please allow me a second chance at a first impression in Suite 208."  He accepts and the conversation that follows between them allows him to come to know her better.

"And with that disarming memory, Anna Urbanova was suddenly describing how as girl she would steal away from her mother at dusk and wind her way down the sloping streets of her fishing village so that she could meet her father on the beach and help him mend his nets.  And, as she talked, the Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment.

After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we've just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel?  For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone?  Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli.  By their very nature human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our re-consideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour."

I love that part about people deserving not only "our consideration, but our re-consideration."

Interestingly enough, your great, great, great, great grandfather Joseph B. Cottrell - even as incredibly intelligent and remarkable as he was - had to combat ill-formed opinions about him that reflected snap judgments.  He wrote about this in one of his newspaper articles in response to correspondence received from another minister.

(Letter of the other minister) "There is a sad undertone often perceptible in what you write.  You are much in my thoughts, and I read between the lines in all that you publish.  You say henceforth, you'll be orthodox.  Stick to that. Do not give up any manhood or betray any convictions.  That you could not do.  But you can rest on your arms awhile and take a breathing spell.  I don't want you to be misunderstood as you are by some.  For the most genial and generous of Methodist preachers to be classed as pugnacious and quarrelsome!  It is a shame and a grief to me.  I have no fears for your outcome.  God fights any true man's battle.  But I want you to be readjusted."

Cottrell writes in rebuttal:


To this beloved brother, I have simply to say - some men's stock and trade are the peculiarities of others, and it is the penalty we have to pay for true life, to have it more abundantly, through experiences of wrong.  It is a small thing to me (sometimes) that I should be judged by man's judgment.  The loyalty of a very few hearts that I know to be unswerving is, to me, far more enjoyable than were the salary of Becher, the prominence of Leo, or the fame of Carlyle....

.....Now in sincerity I say, if I did not know myself to be in accord with the genius and purpose and faith of my church, I would step down (or up) and out in a trice!  When I gave myself to her ministry, I declined a post in a State university for which my education had specially qualified me - a well-furnished home and fifteen hundred dollars salary, besides a prorata share of the tuition fees - and took appointment from Bishop Capers as junior preacher in charge where the negroes had been set off to themselves.  My second sermon before the white congregation on the text "The liberal souls shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself" was considered too broad, and I was relegated to the negroes for the balance of the year, and was paid three hundred-fifty dollars.  I have lived to see the policy suggested in that sermon become the policy of this country.  I have no complaints - no grudge. I most sincerely desire to keep step to the music of Zion with the song of the angels.  "Peace on earth and good will to men."

I truly feel sorry for those people who denied themselves the full understanding of Joseph B. Cottrell - both of his person and of his theology - based upon a narrow first impression. They completely missed out on the opportunity of "re-consideration" from which would have come a true blessing.