It Goes Without Saying. . .

We hear this phrase and then invariably the speaker or writer goes on to say what he just said ‘goes without saying.’ He says it because it needs to be said. Therefore he should not have uttered the phrase in the first place.

A teacher (who I am) should always say what needs to be said, what should be said, what too often isn’t said for the simple reason that there is always someone who is new to or has no experience with the concept being spoken of. We should make no assumptions that something is common knowledge to everyone. What is crystal clear to one person may be an entirely new thought to another.

Many things have come on like the proverbial ‘light bulb’ to me over the years. But interestingly, for me, the ‘new’ thought more often has come as something akin to a restoration of some previous knowledge or acquaintance with the subject. I have found that I have ‘resonated’ with ideas that germinated elsewhere—a déjà vu, if you will. This re-acquaintance with long-forgotten knowledge has brought me great joy.

Let me share a poem from William Wordsworth that says it well (from Ode: Intimations of Immortality):

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

If we have any traction with people, or hope to as I do with the readers of these opinion pieces, we need to be very clear on what we believe or understand about any topic we bring up. If we are so bold as to bring up or comment on something that ‘goes without saying’ or more accurately clearly needs to be said, then we should say enough to ‘connect the dots’ so that our reader or hearer cannot misunderstand.

To ‘connect the dots’ with what Wordsworth so poetically penned let me make it clear: I believe in a pre-mortal life just as certainly as I believe in a post-mortal life. My earthly birth did not start my eternity. Logic is just as well served by believing in a pre-mortal existence as believing in a post-mortal heaven. This knowledge—faith for some—makes my mortal life much more meaningful.

From here I will trail 'clouds of' experience back to God who is my home.