Perception is reality

I always taught at a young age to "never judge a book by its cover". I have found out over the past week that this mantra, like many mantras I was taught in my childhood, is absolute rubbish.

Take a look around you, a credit score (regardless of inquiry into your financial situation)  is used to determine if you're good enough for a car or a loan, a 2-3 page essay is often used to determine if you're good enough to attend a higher institution, a 15-20 minute interview is used to determine if you'll be a good fit for a company...there's a lot of judgment by perception going around in our society.

In our perfect fraternity, we have ways to clear all doubt and ensure we are looking at the reality of a situation not its perception. .The concept is simply termed "due diligence", however this concept is  lost on most of us. Investigation committees don't investigate, a brother is raised and brothers around do not choose to get to know a brother, but instead they judge him by his actions. They don't try to understand his background, his way of thinking, etc. They hear things, they don't try to ascertain for themselves and check facts, instead blindly believing what they hear.

That's just one of the shames of human nature that's brought into our fraternity. It is quite disappointing and I will confess that I am also a guilty party of this offense. But like I said it is human nature, one of my masonic mentors said it best "If every time I meet Gabe he's drunk, naturally I will assume he's an alcoholic. No matter what recommendations are made of him, my recommendation would be that he's a drunk"

My first college roommate taught me a saying about folks who make assumptions, but in the world we live in, that's just the reality of you and me. We just have to make sure we are making a good presentations of ourselves. It's something to strive to but often I imagine it may lead to a loss of self, and that bothers me because I like myself. However, in order to gain some things in life or go a far while,  you have to lose some of yourself.