February 25, 2006

  • B"H


    Who Is Bob?


     


    Introductory Remarks.


    I have discovered that I like language. This is not a new discovery, but it’s important nevertheless. When I was in school I struggled with English and so I concluded that it was not my strong suit. I still don’t think I’m all that good at grammar and composition, but there are certain aspects of language that I find very fascinating.


    As I mentioned in a previous post, this entry may seem odd and convince some that I am truly strange. Others may have already drawn this conclusion for different reasons, but in any event the final outcome might be the same. I don’t mind these things though. I try to live my life based on the wisdom of Dr. Seuss. I believe it was he who said, "Live your life true to yourself, because those who matter, don’t mind and those mind, don’t matter."


    The Setting.


    Years ago we used to live in a complex of townhouses. It was a quiet neighborhood as our apartment was upstairs near the end of a cul de sac. One day my wife and I were quite puzzled as we listened to these two young boys playing out in the courtyard. They seemed to be engaged in some sort of antiphonal chant and they chided each other and called back and forth, "You don’t know Bob!" "No, you don’t know, you don’t know Bob!" This strange vocal exercise went on for somewhere between 30 – 45 minutes. Just like the enticement of forbidden fruit, when they finally stopped chanting I was curious beyond description. A few days later I saw their mother outside and I approached her with this question, "Julie, I heard the boys playing a few days ago and I was wondering, who is Bob?" She looked quite stumped and said she had no idea what I was talking about. Neither her husband nor her brother was named Bob. Since they had been at this for such a long period of time and they were only 4 or 5 yrs old, I figured she must have heard them, at least part of the time. I tried repeating their odd chant in my own awkward way, "You don’t know Boooob!" Somehow my perseverance paid off. At this point Julie laughed and said I had heard the boys wrong. Apparently they had recently seen some type of public service announcement on TV against underage drinking. The slogan from the ad that the boys picked up on was, "We don’t go to bars!" Being that they were only 4 or so and drawing out the word bars (pron = baaaaarrrs), it seems my wife and I both made a reasonable mistake in our interpretation of their chanting.


    A Language Lesson I Learned


    Although I was mistaken in my quest to discover this person named Bob, I did spend a bit of time thinking about how the meaning of a phrase or a sentence can be changed by the emphasis on different words. Here’s a simple case in point (CIP). The Scriptures say, "Let him who stole, steal no longer. Working with his hands the things that are good" Now consider how the meaning changes with only a few punctuation marks being moved. "Let him who stole, steal. No longer working with his hands …." As I pondered this phrase I thought I heard, "You don’t know Bob," this simple lesson emerged.


    You don’t know Bob = A B C D


    A. YOU don’t know Bob


    B. You DON’T know Bob


    C. You don’t KNOW Bob


    D. You don’t know BOB



     




    1. Personal Exclusion




    The emphasis here is on the fact that the subject of the sentence, YOU, is excluded from the action of knowing Bob. Bob may indeed may be knowable, but others know him, not YOU. As an individual, YOU may like Bob and YOU may even want to know him, but presently, such is not the case. This act of exclusion leads to a series of unspoken questions regarding the ability of the individual to truly know this person called Bob.






      • Can I know Bob?



      • How could I go about to make his acquaintance?



      • Do I need an agent to introduce us?





    B.   Present Tense Emphasis





      Now the focus of the phrase is on the present tense. You DON’T know Bob. True friendship requires a lot of hard work. One who would have a friend needs to be a friend. Being a friend means listening, learning, giving, serving and simply caring. I’m not a good friend if I don’t stay current in the relationship. If two individuals don’t talk or work together or interact in any meaningful way currently, their relationship will surely decline. If this goes on for very long, it could easily lead to the conclusion that the friendship is dormant. Whatever else we might say about dormancy, we surely know that a sleeper isn’t much help to anyone. How can someone be regarded as your best friend if you don’t see them or speak with them for an extended period of time? Indeed, maybe at one point in time you may have known Bob, but right now, you have no idea what he’s up to or going through.




    C.  Quality of Relationship





      You don’t KNOW Bob. This emphasis speaks to the issue of intimacy. The issue is not the fact that YOU know various things about Bob; where he was born, what he looks like, his likes and dislikes, etc. The real issue is that YOU have a personal relationship with Bob. You know him and he in turn knows you too. If you two were seen together in some setting, would Bob acknowledge that he knows you and is your friend? You can’t just study Bob like a science project. If you really know him, then it is assumed that there is some degree of exchange or reciprocation in the relationship. My Mother used to say, "It’s the same distance from my house to yours as back." If we are truly friends then sometimes I will call you and sometimes you will call me. If one party is always extending themselves more than the other, then these two are not really friends.




    D.  The Uniqueness of the Individual






    You don’t know BOB. In the whole world there is only one YOU. This is true of each individual, of course, including Bob. You may know someone who is ‘just like Bob,’ but it’s not the same, because there is only one real Bob and no one can take his place. Similarity can never substitute for authenticity. Bob is one of a kind and only he can be the real deal in this relationship.



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    I could go on and on, and perhaps I have already overstated my point. Language is very fluid as a medium whereby we exchange our thoughts with others. There are many shades of meaning and nuances of thought that can shift quite easily by means of precision or imprecision in speech or writing. One should always hope that the others to whom we speak or write might seek out the meaning of what we are saying within the context of who we are. This of course presumes some type of relationship. (This is my segue into a new post on who we are, as believers together in GOD’s world.)



    An interesting and very useful twist to this phrase, "You don’t know Bob," would be to consider "You don’t know GOD." Any thoughts or responses?



    Blessings,



    Shlomo