Ever heard of the expression, “don’t judge a book by its cover?” Ha, silly question. Of course you have. Who hasn’t?
The expression must have started a couple years ago when The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality was written.
Just checked Wikipedia…and it appears as if I was wrong. Turns out the phrase first appeared back in 1944 in the journal American Speech. But it didn’t start out as “don’t judge a book by its cover” – it was originally “you can’t judge a book by its binding.” Then in 1946, the phrase appeared again, slightly modified, in Murder in the Glass Room as “you can never tell a book by its cover.”
However, and perhaps more interestingly, the idea has existed much longer than the above variations of the phrase. The concept itself was addressed in the introduction of La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel back in the 16th century.
François Rabelais writes:
You, my good disciples—and other fools with too much time on their hands—reading the cheerful titles of some of my books, can more easily perceive that they’re not just about mocking and scoffing, full of silliness and pleasant lies—having seen, without having to look any harder, that their outer image (that is, their titles) is usually received with mocking laughter and jokes. But it’s wrong to be so superficial when you’re weighing men’s work in the balance. Wouldn’t you yourself say that the monk’s robes hardly determine who the monk is? Or that there are some wearing monks’ robes who, on the inside, couldn’t be less monkish? Or that there are people wearing Spanish capes who, when it comes to courage, couldn’t have less of the fearless Spanish in them? And that’s why you have to actually open a book and carefully weigh what’s written there.
And if we – and by we I mean Wikipedia – take it even further back we find that the Roman author Juvenal also touched on the concept in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In Satires, he writes “Fronti nulla fides,” which translates to “Never have faith in the front.”
So it seems the phrase wasn’t manufactured just to describe the book that currently occupies all my spare thoughts. But we already knew that, didn’t we?
And so I digress…
But actually, this leads me to a good point. Well, maybe not a good point, but a point nevertheless…the whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” concept is cliché and overused, yes, but do many people actually take the time to really think about what it means? It certainly seems as if a lot of people make a habit of having faith in the front, to borrow from Juvenal, and have a very difficult time seeing past their first thought or initial opinion. But I guess that’s just part of what makes first impressions so powerful. Once an impression has been formed, it is very hard to rewind that initial sequence of events – or thoughts – to recreate or remold it.
In the case of a book, which is what I originally intended to discuss here in the first place, first impressions don’t matter quite as much. Sure, there will be people who won’t buy a book because its cover (or backcover, or even spine in some cases) leads them to believe the book is about something that would not interest them. However, there are just as many people that will buy the book, thinking the book will be about one thing…only to discover that the pages between the covers contain something completely different than what they were expecting. So both groups lose, in a sense.
But what happens when you delete the word “book” from the above example? And add “person” or “experience” in its place. Then insert “first impression” into the space that “cover” occupied. And replace “buy” with “get to know” or “try.”
Did I just make it too confusing?
Let’s simplify. What happens when you don’t get to know a person because of your first impression? What happens when you don’t try a new experience because of your first impression of what it might (or might not) be?
A little more serious than just a book you may have missed out on reading, right?
And if you go back to the book example once more to look at that second group – the group that bought the book thinking it would be something they would enjoy only to find that the book didn’t interest them in the least. Again, replace all the key words…What happens when you get to know a person or try a new experience, only to find the person or the experience doesn’t exactly suit you? Wasted time? In this case, I don’t think so…in fact, I feel that it is quite the opposite. To keep with the clichés, it is far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. In my opinion, it is far better for me to have tried something (new, different…) only to discover that the particular something in question isn’t really my thing (person, experience…) than never to have tried at all.
I’ve always considered myself to be a very open minded person and I have always tried to resist judging books (or people, or places, or experiences, or ideas…or anything for that matter) by their covers. But that fact of the matter is sometimes you can’t help it. It just happens. Sometimes without the knowledge of it even happening, subconsciously, if you will. So here I am, thinking about all the “books” I may have missed out on “reading” in my life, simply because my initial impression told me they wouldn’t be worth my time. I guess it goes without saying that I most likely missed out on some pretty interesting reads…
But from here on out, I’m going to try to be even more open to anything that might take me a bit out of my comfort zone…such an approach might just lead me to some of the most interesting people and life changing experiences of my life.
With all of that said, I’m going to jump back into one read I am glad to say that I have not missed out on due to a faulty first impression…and I guess I’ll save my analysis and ramblings on The Little Book of [Not What The Title Makes You Think] Atheist Spirituality for another day.
