Words Of Discouragement From Lucy To Charley ...

Words of Discouragement from Lucy to Charley Brown

Charley Brown says to Lucy, still dispensing sage wisdom for the pre-inflationary price of five cents, "Nobody likes me, Lucy. Everybody hates my guts. Do you see that plane up there, Lucy? It’s a plane full of people going somewhere else. That’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to go somewhere else, somewhere where nobody knows me. Then with new people I could get a fresh start. Do you think that’s what I ought to do, Lucy? Go get a fresh start with new people who don’t know me?!"

And Lucy, herself fresh from yanking away Charley Brown’s football just before, maybe this year, it would be kicked into the stratosphere, and just as adept at yanking away Charley Brown’s verbal illusions, replies, "Forget it, Charley Brown. Forget it. Once the new people got to know you, you’d be right back where you started from."

The Lucies of this world represent the conventional wisdom: that we will never be accepted. That we will never know enough or be smart enough to be accepted. The Lucies of this world tell us that we are not much and never will be; they know that they know and we don’t.

Lucy is the snob who always has a car more with-it than yours and wears fashions which make your clothes hopelessly dated, because you just don’t get it. Lucy is the man about town, the social butterfly, who is always out having a new and exciting experience, seeing the latest movies, hearing the hippest music, in the know and on the go. The Lucies of this world parade their knowledge, and it really bugs the rest of us who feel as though we can never measure up. The rest of us are Charley Browns, always a day late and a dollar short. We just don’t keep in tune with what’s happening. We don’t know.

From a sermon by Joseph Smith, Fully Known, 10/18/2009