With a glimmer in her eye and with the excitement of a child she says to me, “I know I can beat you in this game because you got the book sense but you don’t have no common sense.” When I hear this my eyes just buck. My mom just told me I didn’t have any common sense lol…who would know better than her right? So I went on to play her in Word with Friends and I spanked her ass in every single game, as I do so often. When I finished the game I said to her, “Now who has the common sense?”

It’s so funny because she knows something to be true about me but after some discovery, its not common sense that I lack…

“Gul you ain’t got no common sense.”

I have heard that so many times in my life its become a running joke with me. But I’ve just made a discovery that I never really even thought about until a few days ago. I posted on my Facebook page…

“What is common sense?”

I had some great answers but the one that resonated me was…

“Common sense is what we know to be right or wrong without real thought.”

Now that made sense to me. Now that, resonated with me. I would hope that the Creator put some knowledge within us that we didn’t have to think about. So then I thought…

“…So it sounds like everything else is ‘learned’ sense ?”

And his response was “See that’s common sense that you realized that! Lol”.

*bombs dropping*

Now? Everything makes sense to me now! I just didn’t have the words to articulate it before because EVERYONE has termed “experience” as “common sense”. And lord knows I have very little experience, even I know that, my mom does too lol.
See that cat there with his head stuck in the glass? That’s something that could of happened to me lol. It’s not that the cat doesn’t have common sense, its just use to being free. When it sees water, it instinctually knows to put its head down to drink. Why would silly humans put it in a glass case that I can’t get my head out of? Who thinks like THAT? It doesn’t have the experience to know what every one else has learned already.

And I have had a whole lot of “experience” challenges in my life. I have been accused of stealing newspapers at my first job…I didn’t realize it wasn’t mines to have. I didn’t learn my ABCs until I was well into Kindergarten…I just didn’t understand why someone would want me to memorize a whole bunch of letters that didn’t even spell a word. I didn’t realize that children shouldn’t play with adults as we play with children…I didn’t understand why size should matter. Speaking of size, it didn’t even occur to me that “children” came in different sizes. Yeah…funny story, you have to hear this…

As a young girl, I grew up in the country…or the woods. I pretty much kept to myself, little T.V, only cartoons and Sesame Street and I read all the time. One day my aunt told me her children were coming home to visit and I was so excited. Finally, I had children to play with! So on the day of their arrival, my aunt yelled to me in the infamous outside voice of the South, “Baby, my children are here!!” I heard her from the next house (lol) and I imagine the sun shone brighter when I smiled after she yelled that. I hurried and put together my care package. I gathered some of my favorite toys and asked mama to give me some snacks for my aunt’s children. I rushed over to her house, opened the door and I asked her where were they and she says “Here they are” and points around the corner. And out from around the corner comes this huge, big ass man, smiling wildly, eyes bucked, all 32 teeth showing and says “Hey Baby!!!”. I damn near shitted on myself, I dropped all my stuff and ran out that door so fast lol. I remember it like it was yesterday, it was SO traumatic and my aunt never forgot it either because she nearly wet herself laughing at me. *smile* She reminds me quite often of the time I did that.

So world? We have it totally WRONG! Everyone has common sense, yes, even me lol. We are all born with the ability to discern “right” from “wrong”. There are certain things we just commonly “know” about the world in which we live, without even thinking. But its not based on societies definition of what everyone should “know” or its definition of “right” or “wrong” not even the Bibles…that requires thought to remember what was written or legal. We can’t forget that a large part of the planet doesn’t even know what a Bible is, let alone what’s in it. But instead, common sense is a feeling based perception, the inner conversation we have with the Divine each and every time we do something. So the commandment, “Thou Shall Not Steal” can’t possibly be from the Creator…thats man made. Can you imagine walking the earth, getting hungry, reaching up to pull an apple from a tree and getting shot in the back for trespassing? Now, our God given right to eat what grows freely is structured around who owns the plant and you knowing that its not free. Crazy right? But now we accept it as “the way it is”, as apart of our experience, something everyone should know.

As we grow and experience THIS life, we and our offspring will experience that land is not free, water is not free, food is not free and sooner or later air won’t be free. It requires experience to know such crazy things…there is nothing common about it.

© Asherah Amyas. 2013.