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Calming Reassurance
The phrase “above the fray” has been used in recent years by a company that designs ways to organize technology to make life less complicated. A consulting group used the same phrase to describe how parents can help their children safely maneuver digital and online activity. However, we don’t want to fixate on “the fray,” but rather focus our attention on conveying the power of big ideas, such as optimism, respect, and mercy.
We want to stay above the fray and cultivate our clarity of thinking. Then we can better reflect and commune with these universal ideas – which have been around for a long time and will continue to be around with the help of librarians.
The ability to laugh – gently and kindly – gives us an advantage in staying above the fray in order to think clearly. Humor delivered with a gracious and open heart is a golden asset – as opposed to thoughtless and uncaring “funny” observations about the oddities of life. Laughter helps us interact with life without being stamped into the ground. This strength leads to the ability to think at higher levels and maintain a sense of curiosity under any circumstances. Laughing gently with ourselves and others, not “at them,” can help us minimize taking life too seriously and boost our ability to think. It offers a tool to help us focus on the calming reassurance of staying above the fray.
But it was Socrates and other great thinkers who set a high standard for using calming reassurance to get above and stay above the fray during life’s difficult struggles, disagreements with colleagues, and assaults by harsh critics.
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates is characterized as striving to expose the arrogance and deception of the “wisdom” of Athens’s elders. His enemies falsely accused Socrates of corrupting the city’s youth – by asking questions and encouraging them to think thoroughly, creatively, and completely. Librarians have something in common with this effort – they provide people with resources, activities, and services in order to encourage them to think for themselves.
Values are sculpted by the mind and establish a foundation for inner strength – no matter if we are feeling annoyed or tolerant. If a library considers “love of learning” a core value, each employee should embrace the idea of learning new things. Library staff value wisdom and the application of knowledge. It doesn’t matter whether someone working in a library happens to be in a good or bad mood on a particular day; the love of learning motivates each person to fulfill the library’s underlying purpose to help enlighten humanity through books, information, programs, and services.
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Excerpt adaptation from pages 57 - 59 of Inspired Thinking: Big Ideas to Enrich Yourself and Your Community by Dorothy Stoltz with Morgan Miller, Lisa Picker, Joseph Thompson, and Carrie Willson. (Chicago: American Library Association © Copyright 2020 by Dorothy Stoltz, Morgan Miller, Lisa Picker, Joseph Thompson, and Carrie Willson. All Rights Reserved.)
