The Foolish Consistency of Spring

Spring has come, and though the skies are still gray and the air still thick with fog, the daffodils and cherry trees are singing their colorful songs of rejoicing on every corner.

Some kind soul, years ago, left money to plant daffodils along the sides of many of the roads on the island; I still remember how shocked I was, shortly after moving here, to see a letter to the editor complaining that our beautiful daffodils should all be removed, as they were not native plantings.

Though I understand the rationale behind restoring native species, I confess this seemed more an example of Emerson's famous saying: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."... which then, if I am to be honest with myself, makes me wonder: where do I exhibit a foolish consistency? Because it seems to me that any time we reject a new idea simply because it diverges from "how we've always done it," without taking time to assess the possibilities it might offer, we risk the opportunity to grow -- rather like the foolish folks at IBM who were first shown the miracle of Xerox copying and declined any interest in the product "because who would ever need that many copies?  Carbon paper and mimeograph machines give us all the copies we need..."