Perspective

September 12, 2016

Greetings from the traveler,

Last week I went to a Moth storytelling event about an hour from where I live.  I have to say it was an impulsive choice, a trip I didn’t have time for and probably was not in the right mindset to pursue.  And of course I was wrong.  I did have time, and the mindset was simply waiting to be discovered.  It was an interesting and fun experience, in an environment I would not have found otherwise. 

The venue was a riotous wreck of color and shapes, much more common on a college campus than the suburban path I run.  The place filled up with people, most of whom did not look like me.  Which is how I should have known I was in the right place.

As I listened to the stories, and watched the audience’s reactions, I got a glimpse of the real diversity in the room.  Ages, races, sexes, political and religious views.   Styles, attitudes, language, skin shades, wheelchairs, hair color, tattoos, piercings.  It was a riotous wreck of color and shapes, which is how humanity presents itself if we look for it.

The stories were as diverse as the people in the room.  Something pricked at my subconscious as I listened.  ‘Pay attention.  This matters.’ 

A few days later I travelled across the country and I was reminded how much it matters to see other places and know the culture and flavor of the world beyond my daily commute.  Too often I have set aside the momentum needed to travel because I don’t have the time or the mindset to pursue it.  Life can carve grooves for us that we are not aware of until we try to slip off in a strange direction.  Pay attention.  This matters.  When you feel you cannot escape the groove is when you most need to.

Not just for yourself, but for humanity.  Sounds dramatic I know.  But as I listened to the stories told a week ago, I was paying attention to the monologues themselves, not the thing that mattered.  Each of these were a page of someone’s life, and for the most part they were far removed from my own life experience, my own perspective.  And that is what I needed to pay attention to. 

It is a lot like going to a different church.  The few times I have broken out of the routine of my own faith ‘practice’ and sat in a new place, surrounded by strangers, I have been more in awe of the diversity of the human experience.  Here in someone else’s place of worship, I can see that these people believe just as passionately as the people sitting in the pews of my own church.  I have heard a different message, and listened to unusual music or unknowable language, been exposed to other beliefs, and sometimes been given understanding and empathy where otherwise might have been scorn. 

Small town cafes where farmers sit around scarred wooden tables and worry to each other about rain.  A group of inmates in jail talking about what they hope for.  A story from a family who faces deportation from a small Michigan town. Watching the woman in the hijab explain herself to the TSA agent.  A group of Christians who must immerse fully in water to be baptized.

None of these stories may matter to you.  None may affect you today.  But when you come face to face with a story like this, one that is not your own, you might either ignore it as irrelevant or you might decide to save humanity from itself.  Pay attention.  This is important.

We travel in tribes. Here are the runners. Here are the geeks. Here are the rich.  Here are the Hispanics. Here are the Mormons.  We see others in their groups and eye them with suspicion or distrust, or worse, indifference.  We seek to protect our own perspective and in that process we often feel like we have to ignore or change those who come from a different direction. 

What came to me this weekend was the need, the mandate really, that is incumbent on all of us as humans.  We need to visit the other tribes.  We can learn from knowing where they come from, what they believe in.  And they can learn from us.  But it is not just the stories we tell each other.  What we all learn is how to respect and honor each other when faced with a foreign outlook.

We don’t have to agree.  We don’t have to condone lifestyles or opinions that don’t align with our own.  There is value in having your own perspective in life, in standing up for what you believe in, and defending it.   How you do that, how you relate your belief to the rest of the world, tells a story too. 

If we care about evolving as human beings we seek opportunities to learn.  If we care about developing ourselves, filling our lives with the richest experiences, we look beyond the things we already know well and seek the adventure outside the grooves.  In this process we will mingle with people from other tribes out exploring for us, and in that exchange humanity can be saved.

Pay attention.  This is important.

Hope this finds you open,

David