Getting It

     First, some old business.
     Lat time, I mentioned some books relating to wonder.  Two readers added their own suggestions, one William James's Varieties of Religious Experience.  How such an obvious selection was missed by me has to be taken as an error occasioned by age.  I'm bound to make mistakes, and ask that you indulge me with a possible smirk that  such mistakes are age-related.   (I have no doubt that I'll make a really stupid mistake now and then, in which case I hope you'll  also be forgiving.) Remember, you're not getting any younger!
     A second book is an anthology by Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder,  which I'll comment upon after reading it.  A third is from my own library: Wonder, by Robert C. Fuller, in which the author grapples with the evolution from "emotion to spirituality," to quote the subtitle.
     In my introduction, I hinted that family-related stories would be few and far between; this is one of those few and far between occasions.
     When he was at university, one of my sons was urged by his math professor to get a PhD in the subject.  I said I didn't remember him as having a special talent in mathematics.  What happened? I asked.  "I don't know," he replied, "I just got it."  And that decades-old comment has become part of my world-view ever since.  (The PhD wasn't appealing; he took an MD instead.)
     The concept of "getting it" is applicable universally.  Some extremely bright persons acknowledge that poetry eludes them.  Others simply don't understand some basic ideas of mathematics or the physical sciences.  An unusually brilliant person I know has admitted that he tried unsuccessfully to understand poetry, art, and photography, ultimately conceding that he was an almost wholly "left brain" person.
      The idea of "getting it" certainly is applicable to political beliefs, so that some otherwise rational people cannot deeply empathize with the impoverished, the dispossessed, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped. And as for wonder, either you "get it" or you don't, and no amount of argument can convince you otherwise.  Which is why I cannot understand the bitterness sometimes shown by theists and atheists at one another, when neither position can be proven indisputably.
     What, if anything can be done to help someone to "get it?"  I can't answer that question believably; perhaps you can, and if so, let the rest of us know.  There is no doubt that being able to "get" something is a function both of nature and nurture, but which of the two is more important may some day be determined.
     Interestingly, the only time I have seen the concept of  "getting it" in print is in a letter in the current (Oct. 29 & Nov.5, 2012) issue of The New Yorker; a physician berates those who would deny services to the destitute, asserting that those living at the bottom of the financial pyramid "get" their situation better than others.
     Until next time.