This morning, I was thinking about positive space and negative space.

The call and the response.

The masculine and the feminine, if you will.

Between any of these things is a boundary.

In order to have true negative space, you must have a clear border.

A gradient will not do.

At a certain point, it becomes simple:

Yes, this is the object.

No, this is not the object.

That requires discernment, the ability to differentiate between That Which Is and That Which Is Not.

Discernment is a lost art these days.

And we all grow poorer for a lack of negative space.

On a physical level, a beautiful building is burning.

I’ve never seen Notre Dame, never been to Paris. There is so much of our history—as a civilization, as a church—that I have yet to witness. At this point, I may never witness it at all.

Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that the craftsmanship that constructed those old great cathedrals actually existed. The transcendently beautiful stained glass. The statues that seemingly contained no flaws. Men built that, with their hands.

On a social level, history is burning.

Individually, we come from dust and return to dust—but what our ancestors have accomplished is almost incomprehensibly vast. Generation upon generation, each building toward something bigger than himself, bigger than his family. Trusting a plan that was sound.

It’s hard for me to comprehend that a plan could stay intact for that long, long enough to build a cathedral. And yet, it did.

We modern men with our computers and our plastic and our planning models, we are but shadows compared to our forebears.

On a symbolic level, Christianity is burning.

Time is still passing, so I can’t say “we have failed.” It is not my place to say “we have failed.” Only God can judge that, and it is not yet the end of days. We are still called to press forward, to charge into the battle armed with His truth.

And yet, we can’t (wont?) defend a treasure of the faith. The church has gone from a place where we claim sanctuary, to a place that we can’t even keep safe.

We in the West have stretched the truth to our own purposes. We have distorted it into a funhouse mirror of social justice and impotent mercy. When we do try, our efforts feel neutered.

I am torn—torn between sorrow and a deep, silent rage.

It’s interesting how different people can have such varied reactions to the same idea.

Take Nassim Taleb’s ideas on how someone who “looks the part” might not be the best choice, all things considered

Say you had the choice between two surgeons of similar rank in the same department in some hospital. The first is highly refined in appearance; he wears silver-rimmed glasses, has a thin built, delicate hands, a measured speech, and elegant gestures. His hair is silver and well combed. He is the person you would put in a movie if you needed to impersonate a surgeon. His office prominently boasts an Ivy League diploma, both for his undergraduate and medical schools.

The second one looks like a butcher; he is overweight, with large hands, uncouth speech and an unkempt appearance. His shirt is dangling from the back. No known tailor in the East Coast of the U.S. is capable of making his shirt button at the neck. He speaks unapologetically with a strong New Yawk accent, as if he wasn’t aware of it. He even has a gold tooth showing when he opens his mouth. The absence of diploma on the wall hints at the lack of pride in his education: he perhaps went to some local college. In a movie, you would expect him to impersonate a retired bodyguard for a junior congressman, or a third-generation cook in a New Jersey cafeteria.

Now if I had to pick, I would overcome my suckerproneness and take the butcher any minute. Even more: I would seek the butcher as a third option if my choice was between two doctors who looked like doctors. Why? Simply the one who doesn’t look the part, conditional of having made a (sort of) successful career in his profession, had to have much to overcome in terms of perception. And if we are lucky enough to have people who do not look the part, it is thanks to the presence of some skin in the game, the contact with reality that filters out incompetence, as reality is blind to looks.

If you have to overcome people’s negative or lowered expectations in order to do a good job, you will likely be forced to cultivate better skills and more knowledge.

I can’t disagree. There’s a bubble that forms when you look and act the way that people expect, especially when there’s already a precedent set by public perception of what your role is. I’ve experienced this bubble. It’s weird.

But not everyone sees life this way.

Take this person I found on Instagram. She’s not happy.

One way to handle this situation would be to take advantage her perceived “lowered” status as looking-like-an-assistant and proceed to blow expectations out of the water with a stellar keynote. By starting from a place of low expectations, and over-delivering, she’d likely make a huge impression on people—because the perceived gain is high.

The other way to handle this situation is to complain about it on social media to try to influence people to change their perceptions.

One means swallowing your pride in the short term, but might pay off big in the long term; the other might feel good in the short term, but probably won’t go anywhere because people’s perceptions are typically heavily entrenched.

Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, and wishing that it weren’t so isn’t going to help us out.

There’s lots of benefits we can get from going against the roles that are cast for us by society. It just takes some imagination.