People always seem to need evidence. Like Doubting Thomas, they won’t BELIEVE anything unless they see it with their own two eyes. And worse, even if they see something, they still find so many excuses not to believe. They seek more and more evidence until they can finally support their stand of NOT BELIEVING.
For example, a person may see a yellow object, long and curved, a bit pointed at the end, fleshy and looks like fruit. In fact, it looks like a BANANA! Then a monkey appears and sees the object, smells it, peels it and eats half of it. The person cries, “Boy, it sure looks like a banana.” Then I tell that person that it was indeed a banana.
The person frowns and tells you, well you know, a monkey is still a monkey, suppose that the monkey was fooled? WHAT?! This person sees a banana, sees a monkey eat that banana and still doesn’t believe. So you both steal that banana from the poor monkey and have it inspected by a scientist, not just an ordinary scientist, but a BANANA EXPERT. The expert confirms that it was indeed a banana. But Doubting Thomas still wasn’t satisfied. What if the expert was just mistaken? Was he really an expert of BANANACOLOGY? So you both investigate his credentials and certificates from schools he graduated from. They were authentic. But wait a minute! What if that school was releasing these certificates without quality education? And then, what if the theories from previous scientists taught have all been errors? Could it still be banana?
The argument can go on and on, doubting this and doubting that. Woe to the person who allows himself to be victimized by DOUBTING BANANAS! When is his doubt going to be satisfied? In my own area of expertise, I’ve met auditors who act just like that, never being satisfied even if a concrete evidence is presented infront of their faces. There are also bosses like that. They in turn doubt their auditors.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ask for evidences and that we shouldn’t verify things. What I’m saying is that we should know when to stop our investigations before we all act like fools. But how? COMMONSENSE. Something that’s very uncommon nowadays.
In a time where we rely upon so many manuals and experts, we’ve started to lose our own minds and our own powers to understand. We’ve lost our commonsense and became doubting bananas, paranoid people who can’t ever be satisfied.
Don’t be a banana. Nurture your mind. In the end, maybe it won’t matter anyway what fruit the monkey ate. So what if it’s not a banana after all?
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"Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief", "Mend My Broken Heart", "Questions to God", "To Love an Invisible God", "Defending My Catholic Faith", and more - click here.
(You may freely quote excerpts from this website as long as due credit is given to author Jocelyn Soriano and the website itakeoffthemask.com)
3 replies on “Doubting Bananas”
“Don’t be a banana. Nurture your mind.” And I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s ironic to me that we have so much doubt, and yet value “expertise” so highly nowadays. I think hunting for truth has become such a common fetish because we are afraid, the whole of us, of looking within. This era of hyperdigitization and hyperinformation has only magnified the thirst for depth, truth, and knowingness. Here’s to nurturing wisdom in ourselves and spiraling outward with that wisdom into the world!
Yes! story of my life but I had a revelation I told the bananna again it was a monkey it went on and on making excuses for the monkey! But yanno it is what it is a DAM MOnKEY and from this day foward I will never try to convice that bananna or anyone else that its a monkey. I guess what I a trying to say is u cant show someone who is blind, so y even try!
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