Are You Functioning on all Wavelengths?

I remember my Dad saying some people don’t function on certain wavelengths.  Like, for example, an insensitive neighbour who would say hurtful things to almost everyone she met, but was oblivious to the effects of her barbed comments.  I could see what he meant by that and years of teaching seemed to clarify such things.  He would point out that, if a child came from a family where honesty was not insisted upon then often the entire next generation was devoid of any scruples in that particular arena.  It was indeed as if an entire wavelength of understanding was missing.  It was appropriate to take pens, pencils, money etc as long as no one spotted you.  The older I get, the more I realize that each of us has our own missing wavelengths and tests and difficulties come along and show us exactly what we have not yet mastered.  My middle son was highly tuned to people around him.  

He could sense their unhappiness, joy, intent to a degree that startled me.  I suppose you could call it intuition.  Some years ago my mother fell down a flight of stairs in a hotel and I was startled to find seconds later my son appeared.  He had sensed something wrong and run all the way from home to the hotel.  It is hard to use science to explain how such things happen.  When we had visitors, my son would whisper to me, how sad this one appeared. He didn’t seem to need to speak to them to pick up on what they were feeling.  I, instead, had inherited my Dad’s lack of intuition.  We used to joke that when buying a new car we would ask Dad which car in the whole parking lot he liked, then make sure that whatever car we decided to buy, it was not the one he picked, as it was sure to be a dud!

Walking down a street one day my middle son said “did you see that man Mum he was crying as he came out of the shop?”  My youngest son had seen the man but not noticed he was crying and my eldest had neither noticed the man nor the shop.  We seem to inhabit almost different worlds at times.  I suppose you would call it a kind of emotional intelligence.  Either you have it or you don’t.  But, if life has a purpose then surely progress is required and if we are missing wavelengths we need to focus on the ones missing and fast.  Nothing highlights gaps in our wavelengths better than learning from those who are sensitive to those very areas.  If our filters are set to cut out certain parts of the spectrum we cannot rely on our own eyes and senses to spot them.  We require to have around us those, whose filters are on a completely different range.  It can be painful to see the world anew or learn that we are not seeing enough.  Challenging to have it drawn to our attention.  But I have grown to respect that such people open us up to, not only a new world out there but, a whole world inside us that has been neglected.  We need all the wavelengths functioning!