Sunday, March 16, 2014

You Need Both

What is the difference between passive and active? Passive isn't always the opposite of active. It stands on its own as a peaceful response as well as being inert or inactive.

Active brings forth a litany of descriptors: brisk, energetic, productive, animated, agile. Active creates a visual of someone in the fray of the battle, someone who gets things done, who finds out what needs to be done and does it.

I think the word passive carries an unfair burden. It connotes the person who shuns the marketplace where the bartering and activity takes place. Yet, there are things that we call passive, but in fact are active.

This isn't a case of semantics, but one of accepting that active may mean a conscious contemplative response that requires a different aspect of active.

I think too often we fold the paper in half, mark one side as being active in the world and the other side as being passive in the world.

Last year I read a book by a woman who prayed for strangers. Every day she selected one stranger she saw, or introduced herself to that day. She told the person that she was going to pray for them. (This was down in the south where people might be amenable to some stranger approaching and announcing her intentions to pray.)

Passive as a peaceful response—

There's action that is chaotic, ill timed, not thought out. There's passive that is slack, resigned, submissive.

And there's action that moves mountains. There's passive action that prays for those mountains to be moved—and the workers appear.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home