Ever spend any time wondering what sheaves are?
I didn’t think so.
It’s not the kind of question that would naturally occur to most people. But one day when I was about 5, running around belting out a hymn I’d just heard at church, I did start to wonder.
“Bringing in the Sheaves” is a song that was familiar to a lot more people a generation or two ago. But I had never heard of sheaves until that morning in church.
So I asked the closest authoritative grownup.
“What are sheaves?”
The answer came back without hesitation: “Bad people.”
That reply must have confused me enough to make the conversation memorable, because developmental psychologists say 5 is a little early for most of us to remember an event in detail, unless it is a particularly noteworthy one.
To give the authoritative grownup his or her due, the answer might have made more sense to an older person with some understanding of the difference between a fact and a symbol. The grownup was saying sheaves were symbolic for, well, bad people.
But that particular symbol still might not make sense to someone unfamiliar with the traditional teachings of the church where I first heard the song.
The psychologist George Kelly believed we humans tend to think in terms of opposites about things that are important to us. Religious beliefs, political beliefs, personal goals, relationships with others, any issues that matter to us.
For example, good people might be seen as the opposite of bad people. Liberals might be the opposite of conservatives, or Republicans the opposite of Democrats. Pretty might be the opposite of ugly, or love the opposite of hate.
But Kelly also said we might not all agree on the opposite of something. It might depend on the individual and his or her context.
For example, if we tell someone not to be ugly, we likely are not recommending that the person seek cosmetic surgery. In this context, ugly would not be the opposite of pretty but the opposite of kind, or polite, or nice.
Sheaves are the plural of sheaf, a word most people don’t use on a daily basis. A sheaf is a bundle of grain stalks tied together before being brought in from the field.
It’s hard to find an opposite for a bundle of grain, unless it is meant symbolically.
For someone unfamiliar with that grownup’s religious tradition, the answer to my question is likely to have sounded not only confusing, but alarming.
In fact, we can end up having (or working hard to avoid) horrendous arguments based on our understanding of opposites.
Years ago, during my first job out of graduate school, I was speaking to a community group about the need for volunteers to work with runaway children.
One man in the group seemed particularly agitated. When the time came for questions from the audience, he verbally attacked my presentation and the nonprofit I represented, because we were not a literacy program.
I was temporarily confused. True, we were not involved with literacy. Neither were we involved with childhood obesity, or teen pregnancy, or any number of other worthwhile efforts that exist in the world.
We were a juvenile justice agency. And in the context of that man’s world at the time, the important set of opposites involved literacy programs versus any other kind of programs.
He happened to be involved in a local literacy program.
It would have been helpful to know about George Kelly at that moment. I did not encounter his ideas before returning to school the following year, too late for that awkward question and answer session.
But not too late to put to use now. Especially since it is once again political campaign season.
We will be hearing about a lot of opposites between now and next year’s election. A lot of those opposites will be as confusing as literacy versus juvenile justice, or good people versus sheaves.
It might help to remember that people often have their own personal opposites.
If we keep that in mind, we might be more likely still to be speaking to each other by the next inauguration.
Julia Cochran is a licensed professional counselor in Rincon and a psychology instructor at Armstrong State University. She can be reached at 912-772-3072 or by email at JCochranPhD@GileadCounseling.com. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Armstrong State University.