you see what you look at

[Apologies to my late grandma for the blog title; she heartily disliked any sentence that ended with a preposition!]

 

When my best friend turned 16, he acquired (for $1,000!) a 14-year-old BMW. Given its age and mileage, he perpetually performed maintenance on that car -- for him, it was a labor of love. It looked sleek.

I, on the other hand, knew nothing about BMW's. If asked, I wouldn't have been able to identify them from any other brand of car.

But here's what began to happen:

 

Once I began to ride with him in this car, and listened to him talk so much about his car, I started noticing other BMW's everywhere on the road.

 

The distinctive headlights-

That logo-

I had no idea how many people drove this kind of car, until I knew what I was looking at [apologies again to grandma - another preposition!]. 

 

Once I could identify them, I could see them.

 

Isn't that how it normally goes for you and for me? What we look at, we tend to see. But until we know what we're looking at, we don't see it.

 

Some examples: 

-A friend will play you a song they love, and will point out a note sung (or instrument used) at a particular moment in the song. They'll tell you why they specifically love that part. You never noticed it before. But after it's pointed out to you, you can't not hear it.

-You love a particular snack. But until you told your friends about this, they'd never heard of nor seen it sold anywhere -- but since you told them, they see it all the time. They even will send you a message when they find it somewhere. "This makes me think of you"

 

So: 

 

If you're anxious, discouraged, disheartened, cynical -- I'm not going to say there's no legit reason for this. The world puts us all on blast every moment telling us what sucks and what's getting worse.

 

But I will ask: if you want more hope, more encouragement, less anxiety, less cynicism ... what are you purposefully looking at that'll point out to you those sources of hope? What are you looking at that'll show you why there's reason to feel encouraged? Where are you looking to that's committed to lessening your anxiety or cynicism? 

 

Who in your life reminds you of these things? Who in your news feed shows this to you? 

 

It's naively idealistic to think we can thrive without intentionally looking for what's hopeful, encouraging, authentic, true, or noble. If your social media feed is 15% encouragement and 85% doom and gloom, it's reasonable to presume your mood and mindset would correlate to this.

  

Perhaps this is why the apostle Paul writes (while he's in prison!) in Philippians 4 to his hearers about this:

 

Truth is, our minds will fill with something. Ergo, we gotta watch what we think about and put into our minds (just like we gotta watch what we eat and drink to maintain our health). 

 

We see what we look at. What are you looking at?

 

satellites connect us

Sometimes in life, some event scatters a cluster of friends outward from a shared space and common timeline.

-High school graduation.

-A church youth group slowly ages out -- going its separate ways, ending up worlds apart.

-A team finishes a season.

-Last night of summer camp.

-A best friend from elementary or middle school moves away in the summer.

-The final night of a play, after striking the stage.

-End of a spring semester of college.

-College graduation.

 

Like an exploding star of memories and matter, what seemed like one friend nucleus becomes multiple paths, spreading outward ... and away.

 

"You don't have to go home, 

but you can't stay here" -Semisonic, 'Closing Time'

There's an excitement to these new paths. 

 

There's a poignancy to stepping off the old paths.

Maintaining these ties to our once-clustered loved ones takes intentionality that it didn't once require.

 

"Nothing gold can stay," the poet reminds us. "A time to keep, a time to cast away," the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us.

The proximity we shared (and sometimes took for granted, though honestly, we didn't mean to) wasn't meant for forever. Goodbyes come at some point. Our times together become scattered.

"I guess this is growing up" -Blink 182, 'Dammit'

But: we're not without some hope. The metaphor of you and your friends scattering like an exploding star--forever outward and away--thankfully isn't the most accurate metaphor. It just can't be.

Why: because, Lord willing, there will be times to reconvene. There will be times to re-gather. There will be times to mourn together, to be together, and to laugh together, in a shared physical time and place again.

My vote for a more accurate metaphor is this: maybe we're more like a satellites orbiting a moon.

 

Times will come when our links to our friends gets tenuous. They disappear to the dark side of the moon (so to speak), and our signal contact gets interrupted. From other people's perspectives, we go around that side of the moon as well. But they (and we) can come back around. Our signal contact gets restored.

It's something exceptional when you and your people reconnect. The most unexpected tears of joy I let out on my wedding day was in our receiving line, seeing my dear college friend Vicki greet me and my wife. I knew she'd be there, so her presence wasn't a surprise. A vital, lovely, loyal friend from such a formative time of my life, traveling such a long way to witness a life milestone of mine. We once saw each other every day, but those days are gone. Seeing her there mattered the world to me. I'll never forget it.

The orbits can align again, for a time. 

We do get some say in where our orbits steer us.

So hold tightly to each other while you're here, and you're together. Enjoy the now. Don't worry that it feels like it's slipping away too fast; you can't help that.

It's doesn't have to be the beginning of the end. But perhaps, it's actually the end of some beginning. 

Different can still be good, but it'll rarely be the same sort of good. It'll be a new, usually unanticipated sort of good. Prepare to make effort to stay in touch. Don't let sporadic contact dishearten you for long. Send a text. Write the note. Make the drive. Book the travel. Walk together. Tell them when something makes you smile because it reminds you of them. Send a text again.

There's just nothing like old friends.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" -Semisonic, 'Closing Time'

5K Race-1, Me-0

Disclosure: some years back before I was married, I participated in a charity 5K race [Actual Full Disclosure: I was trying to impress a girl who was into running; in hindsight, I can attest that wise outcomes seldom follow these sorts of motivations]. I had hopes of clocking a decent (ie ... impressive to the girl) time. Even though it was my first 5K, I thought the race would be a cinch.

Nope.

For starters, the solitary bowl of stale corn flakes cereal I hurriedly consumed beforehand (because I overslept) wasn't near enough to sustain me.

Secondly, the evening before the race, I stood up as a groomsmen in a dear friend's wedding. So my nutritional intake ... diverged (shall we say) from the norm. Catered, high-sugar food; boiled shrimp and crab dip galore; celebratory glass of champagne; subsequent toasts to the bridge and groom to follow; all-night reception dancing in rented shoes; (certainly) not drinking enough water; ears ringing from the music.

"I should've gotten to sleep earlier, but it'll be OK," I told myself as I crawled into bed mere hours before the 8AM race. "How rough could it get?"

Rough.

Atrocious finish time. "I didn't realize a 5K could feel this long!" I wheezed. I felt so [EDIT] hungry. And bleary tired -- coffee could not put me right.

[And yes, for those wondering, of course the girl I longed to impress finished ahead of me. Way, way ahead of me. I tried to console myself by thinking that perhaps her spirit was moved by my gallant effort to slough through this impossible event, though I knew this scenario also seemed improbable.]

Trouble is, I just wasn't thinking about cause-and-effect. I thought of myself as able to get the outputs I wanted, regardless of inputs. How often do you sometimes live as though you're cobbled together this way?

Turns out that the way we're created, all that comes together and stays woven together.

When Scripture talks of growing in wisdom, it always includes growing in the relational sense of who God is, and how we are to enjoy God. But there's more. It's not limited to that though. We also incorporate wise living into our routines, to make less challenging the pursuit of wise, loving, and Godly matters.

Our emotional/spiritual/overall health never untethers from what we eat/when we eat. Sleep? It's forever influenced by that too. It's connected by how and when we pray, what/when we consume for entertainment/news, what physically surrounds us, our friends/family, and their moods. 

It's just how we're created. 

It's OK to be reminded of this ... everyone needs reminders. Maybe this is some of why we're advised to think about stuff that's pure, right, true, lovely, admirable, praiseworthy ... it affects everything else we have going on.

With life experience, we grow in discerning this, which is truly happy news. Instead of disconnected quadrants, we begin to see ourselves as an adapting layout of pulleys, levels, buttons and switches ... you don't know what all the switches do or exactly how everything works, but you're learning all the time that it's all connected.

Take heart, friends ... getting wiser in these ways takes the slow pace of time for everyone. As for me, if I should ever choose to participate in a race again, at least I know some of what not to do beforehand -- and that's not a bad place to start.