The Ledger

By Becky Holland

My dad was an HVAC contractor, but he wasn’t just in the business of fixing heating and air conditioning systems. He was in the business of teaching life lessons.

He had a way of taking ordinary things and using them to explain character.

One day he said something I’ve never forgotten.

“A thermometer tells you the temperature. A thermostat changes it.”

He wasn’t talking about furnaces or air conditioners.

He was talking about people.

A thermometer simply reflects its surroundings. If the room is cold, it tells you it’s cold. If the room is hot, it tells you it’s hot. It reacts to whatever environment it finds itself in.

People do that, too.

Someone is rude, so we’re rude. Someone raises their voice, so we raise ours. Negativity spreads, and before long we’re adding to it. We simply reflect the atmosphere around us.

It’s easy to become a thermometer.

Being a thermostat is much harder.

A thermostat recognizes what’s happening, but instead of reacting, it responds. If the room is too cold, it brings warmth. If it’s too hot, it helps cool things down. It influences the environment instead of allowing the environment to influence it.

Dad’s point wasn’t that we should ignore problems or pretend everything is fine.

His point was that we always have a choice.

Will we simply mirror the attitudes around us, or will we help create something better?

I’ve thought about that lesson many times over the years.

Every family has tense moments. Every workplace has difficult days. Every church, every school, every community faces conflict from time to time. Every one of us walks into rooms where frustration, anger, fear or discouragement already exists.

In those moments, we have a decision to make.

Will we be a thermometer, reacting to the climate around us?

Or will we be a thermostat, bringing patience where there’s impatience, kindness where there’s harshness, peace where there’s tension, and hope where there’s discouragement?

I wish I could tell you I’ve always chosen wisely.

I haven’t.

Sometimes I’ve been the thermometer.

But Dad’s words still come back to me, reminding me that I don’t have to let someone else’s attitude determine my own.

Character isn’t revealed when the room is comfortable.

Character is revealed when we have the opportunity to change the temperature.

The older I get, the more grateful I am for those simple conversations with my dad. He understood something that reaches far beyond heating and air conditioning.

The world doesn’t need more people who simply tell us the temperature.

It needs more people willing to change it for the better.