Pull the revolver…
'We had an open discussion about when the pull the revolver. I mean, these were unusual times. People could get hurt if we pull it. People could get hurt if we don't. We weren't even sure if we were allowed to pull it. Like I said, these were strange times.'
I wish I could say it was one of the stranger things I heard last week. Truth is, I'm hearing these kinds of statements more frequently now: statements that before 2020 would have only been heard in case studies or courtrooms. 2020 was the year of the case-study-gone-bad, wasn't it? Isn't it still?
Needless to say, the statement caught me off guard. I wasn't sure what he was talking about.
As lockdown started in March 2020, a neighbor stopped me in the driveway: 'you have protection?' he wondered out loud. I thought about what I needed protection from and what that protection would look like? If you recall, these were times when toilet paper was trending higher than bitcoin and liquor distilleries had shifted their production to make hand sanitizer. I quickly inventoried the house: masks? Check. Hand sanitizer? Check. Prophylactics? Stores of rations? Guns?
I realized quickly that I had not given danger the same inevitability he had, nor the necessity for 'protection' from whatever he thought imminent.
'Guns,' he stated emphatically. 'Do you have protection?' Oh, that.
He saw the world as dangerous and we saw it as unclean. (As an editorial footnote, his question preceded any of the events on racial and social justice, so his mental context was limited to the scarcity of toilet paper).
I suddenly felt vulnerable to something against which I didn't know I should be wary, leaving me wondering if should I have a revolver?
'Revolvers' seemed prominent in 2020 for all the wrong reasons.
So in January 2021, any talk of 'revolver' prompted thoughts of shiny pistols and holsters because of the recency of the social unrest and of my driveway discussion. These weren't games of cowboys and Indians, pow! pow!
'…so I called my boss and we called the bank,' continued my client last week. 'We wanted to claim our credit with the bank before there was a run.'
Money. Payroll. Board approvals. Revolving credit... Ohhhh. Bank of America, not Browning.
I settled into the discussion, more at ease now that I was clear on how he was using his terms and oriented to his frame of reference.
I also had to decide what to do with my embarrassment as I recalled the guns, prophylactics and toilet paper discussion in my driveway. Had I been that far off base? Was I crazy for thinking of a pistol when he intended credit?
So I decided to do nothing with it. Our emotions are energy in motion; our body and soul's way of communicating in ways and speeds that our minds cannot process.
Frankl says that 'maturity is the pause between the stimulus and the response.' I think he means that we stop long enough to understand if we're talking about credit or carbines, paperwork or prophylactics. I think he means that we pause to listen to what's really being said and notice what's going on within us. I don't know if it's maturity or common sense, but I wish there was more of it.