Life Lessons from Strangers

On my morning commute to work, I occasionally see an elderly man walking on the sidewalk, using his cane, and going about his life. What makes this man special? Why do I always look for him? I have no idea who he is, where he lives, or what he has done in his lifetime.

I do know that whenever a car passes him by, he waves and grins at the driver.

This man chooses joy each morning on his stroll. The first time I saw him, I thought that he knew the person that was passing. When it kept happening though, I knew that he was just doing it to show some kindness. He doesn't know any of us, but that doesn't stop this man from grinning at his fellow human-beings like they were his best friends in the whole world. It is one of the sweetest experiences to see how much he wants to say "hello". I always make sure to wave back.

There is so much anger and hatred in the world. What would it look like if we truly loved our enemies, as Jesus tells us to do in Matthew 5?

Work-Life-Baseball Balance

I went to a baseball game last night with some of my co-workers for a company outing. The whole day, I was dreading going for a number of reasons. First of all, I don’t drink very often, and I knew that a lot of my work friends were going to use the event as an excuse to become very intoxicated. That is their choice, and if that is what makes them happy, so be it. The party lifestyle is simply not how I choose to live. I don’t like how I get when I drink, and I don’t think that I am able to be like Christ in those moments. However, I know that in those situations, it is very difficult not to succumb to peer pressure. No one has ever forced me to take a sip of alcohol, but I still feel the pressure because it never feels good to be considered the outsider.

Another reason I didn’t want to go to the game is because of my singleness. Most of my co-workers have a significant other, and the ones who don’t are the ones who drink heavily. What was I going to do? I hate small talk. It pretty much bores me to tears because it doesn’t mean anything. I want to know what people are actually about, not just what they do. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter because I am on the committee that plans the company events; it was my responsibility to go as part of that role.

It ended up being okay because there were three other single female co-workers who were there that weren’t drinking either. (At an engineering company, the fact that there was even one other person from my same demographic there was amazing, let alone three!) I actually had a really good time. The team even won! And the fireworks after the game were absolutely phenomenal.

In the midst of my pity party yesterday afternoon when I seriously considered just going home for the night, I had texted a friend to complain. Her response was that I needed “to learn to be content in being single eventually”. Um. Okay. I don’t think that not wanting to hang out by myself in a crowd of drunken people was really a problem with singleness. It was a problem with not feeling understood in general. 

It is very hard to maintain my faith and values in the workplace when everyone else practically screams that they think I am wrong. Cursing is pervasive in the language around the office, and I very much want to change how much I contribute to it. Drinking is a common theme among work functions. I really had to change my attitude when I started my career because I have never been around alcohol very much, but that is simply how my co-workers choose to relate to one another. Other people have different standards, and I can’t judge them for how they live their lives. I can only seek to do my best to live the way I think God wants me to live.

Not a Latte Conversation

Something historic happened tonight: I went on a date. Why is this historic, you ask? Well, I can actually count the number of guys I have dated on less than two hands. I didn’t even go on my first “official” date until the week before I turned 23. As you can probably see, dating has never been high on my list of priorities. I figure that there is a lot of hassle involved that I just don’t care to handle. I was at an event for work a couple weeks ago, and afterwards, I was getting lunch with a few of the ladies from the office. They were all talking about their husbands and making marriage sound incredibly enticing (not.) when one of them asked me what I thought about younger men. She proceeded to tell me about her cousin (let’s call him "T") who was a sweet guy and had broken up with his long-time girlfriend earlier this year. I said I was open to being set up and told her that she could see if he was interested.

When I got into work on Monday, my co-worker said that her cousin was very interested, and she gave me T’s number so that he and I could talk. I sent him a text that night to say “hello”, and so, we started talking and trying to get to know one another. Only, the texts didn’t really make up a conversation. There weren’t many questions being asked, just a lot of statements being made. It didn’t seem like we were really making much progress, but T still kept texting me anyway. He also would send me messages very early in the mornings to say things like “Good morning. Have a great day.” Keep in mind that we had not even seen in each other in person yet. Those are the types of messages that you send when you are already in a relationship.

Within a few days, I was already getting bored with the texting back and forth. I don’t think T meets new people very often, and I don’t think he is a bad guy. I simply wasn’t interested. We didn’t have much to say to each other. I had to make a day-trip to Atlanta for work last Friday, and he was texting me during the middle of the day. When I said that I was travelling, the subject came up of whether or not we each liked to travel. I have been out of the country twice, and I have travelled to various places around the United States. I love travelling, and I want to do much more of it in the coming years. However, T had only been to two of the immediately surrounding states. There is nothing wrong with this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being happy where you are, but that isn’t the culture in which I was raised. My family greatly values learning and travelling and growing as an individual, and that hunger for knowledge was instilled in me from a very young age.

Things were not off to a great start. We didn’t say much over the next couple of days until Tuesday. It was the same story with the text messages not really saying anything. At this point, I was about done with the situation but didn’t know how to politely end it. I sent a message saying, “I feel like we don’t really have a lot to say in our text messages. It’s hard to get to know someone when you aren’t having actual conversations.” Much to my surprise, T agreed and asked if I wanted to go out for lunch, dinner, or coffee. I couldn’t say “no”, so I agreed to coffee, the least committal of the three options. We agreed upon a time of two days later and a place near the river.

Fast forward to Thursday: the date wasn’t terrible, but I think I really only went because I felt like I owed it to my co-worker to give it a shot. T was polite and held the door open for me, but we were struggling the entire evening to find common ground. We don’t share many, if any, common interests. At more than one point, when there was a pause in the conversation, he would mumble, “What else is there to talk about?” There was no flow of conversation, and I don’t think either of us were at fault for it not being a good match. After sitting and talking for about an hour, we took a walk, which landed us back at the plaza around 9 PM. T asked if I wanted anything else like ice cream or whatever, and I said that I was good. Then, I asked if he just wanted to call it a night. It was getting late, and we both had work in the morning! He walked me to my car, we hugged, and we parted ways. 

I don’t expect that we will be having a second date, which is fine with me. I have no ill feelings towards T, and I would consider being his friend, just not a romantic partner.