People Powered
I am people-powered as much as I am solar-powered. I get a charge out of being in the light and being with people.
Tonight, I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood, inwardly hoping to meet some of our neighbors. I am working from home these days and could feel my people-powered tank running on fumes.
So, I set out on my own and felt unusually self-conscious about being a man walking around by himself in a new neighborhood. In short, I felt like an outsider as I walked past people talking to each other in front of their garages. I tried a few weak “hi’s” and “hello’s”, but didn’t get the responses I was looking for.
Getting to know people is hard work, even for people who like to do so.
And it’s risky. We risk rejection when we attempt to befriend “strangers”. There are myriad reasons that people don’t get to know the people 15’ from their front door, but I’ll venture to guess that one of the primary reasons is the fear of rejection.
In fact, as I walked around, I noticed other people outside and from their behaviors I picked up that they, too, were looking for relationships. They weren’t just out getting exercise; they were hoping to connect with other humans.
And that desire for connecting with others is one of the most powerful of human drives.
Just think of all the things we do to keep ourselves from feeling disconnected, except taking the risks necessary to connect. Almost anything can qualify and most of the “diversions” are fine and healthy in and of themselves. But when we use them to avoid the pain that accompanies the process of relationship building, then we have gone awry and we cheat those who would benefit from our friendship as much as we cheat ourselves.
Thankfully, my walk had a happy ending. I was nearing our home and saw one of our “unmet” neighbors pull up to his garage. I had to slow down to get his attention, and I had to make it obvious that I wanted to meet him. But it was a positive encounter and the uncomfortable work of first meeting is now over.
Then, as I walked away I noticed our “unmet” neighbor-next-door standing outside as she talked with a friend. This time it was she who initiated the greeting and I spent 15 quality minutes talking with her, her husband, and her friend.
I walked into our home fuller than I left, and it was the simple meeting of human spirits that provided the spark of energy. Love it!!
Selah
Tonight, I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood, inwardly hoping to meet some of our neighbors. I am working from home these days and could feel my people-powered tank running on fumes.
So, I set out on my own and felt unusually self-conscious about being a man walking around by himself in a new neighborhood. In short, I felt like an outsider as I walked past people talking to each other in front of their garages. I tried a few weak “hi’s” and “hello’s”, but didn’t get the responses I was looking for.
Getting to know people is hard work, even for people who like to do so.
And it’s risky. We risk rejection when we attempt to befriend “strangers”. There are myriad reasons that people don’t get to know the people 15’ from their front door, but I’ll venture to guess that one of the primary reasons is the fear of rejection.
In fact, as I walked around, I noticed other people outside and from their behaviors I picked up that they, too, were looking for relationships. They weren’t just out getting exercise; they were hoping to connect with other humans.
And that desire for connecting with others is one of the most powerful of human drives.
Just think of all the things we do to keep ourselves from feeling disconnected, except taking the risks necessary to connect. Almost anything can qualify and most of the “diversions” are fine and healthy in and of themselves. But when we use them to avoid the pain that accompanies the process of relationship building, then we have gone awry and we cheat those who would benefit from our friendship as much as we cheat ourselves.
Thankfully, my walk had a happy ending. I was nearing our home and saw one of our “unmet” neighbors pull up to his garage. I had to slow down to get his attention, and I had to make it obvious that I wanted to meet him. But it was a positive encounter and the uncomfortable work of first meeting is now over.
Then, as I walked away I noticed our “unmet” neighbor-next-door standing outside as she talked with a friend. This time it was she who initiated the greeting and I spent 15 quality minutes talking with her, her husband, and her friend.
I walked into our home fuller than I left, and it was the simple meeting of human spirits that provided the spark of energy. Love it!!
Selah
posted by Dave Jones at 10:53 AM
1 Comments:
This was quite enjoyable to read. I felt like I took that walk with you... I love that you think about these things... These are the things I constantly think about - the things I can't stop thinking about. Here in your account this skein unravels pleasurably. One feels that it's good to be sensitive to the needs of one's fellow man, as the author has riskily allowed himself to be.
But.
Sometimes it's a volume knob I wish I could turn off. A voice I wish would stop talking occasionally. A ticker-tape I wish would stop printing into infinite coils on the carpet. There is a dark side to awareness. Hyper-awareness. Discomfort caused by a dissonant social situation accompanied by an Adrian Monk-like compulsion to guide that lost soul into safer waters, to ease their floundering, to lubricate their ill-fitted joints. They can't simply say thank you when complimented, precisely because they are starved for a good word. They wield sarcasm clumsily, crossing from humor into hurtfulness. If they aren't watered with skillful, gentle attention and steadily plied with thoughtful questions they will wilt and shrivel into themselves for the rest of the evening, incapable of climbing out of the bottomless hole that is... their hopeless obsession with their own inadequacy. They are broken. They are in too much pain to direct emotional attention outside themselves, and hence incapable of employing the most necessary social grace - persistent interest in others.
And then.
Just when I've reached lyrical heights of obsessive awareness, my wife wisely interjects (as so many have before her), 'You think too much.' To which I reply, now, so many moments after, 'If you find the knob, I'll gladly turn it down.'
But my restless mind won't even let me enjoy my metaphor. Before the paragraph above has even finished traveling from synapse to screen, I'm dutifully fiddling with my compass and rudder, knowing that there's something else between being oblivious and being buried under the weight of false obligation. I know. I taste it once in a while. Bertha Calloway said "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." And the Spirit moves over the water, and I run before it, blown along by another's strength, steering a course for Someone Else Who's Really Needy.
I'm not the healer.
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