I have been thinking a lot lately about how we really tend to give people simple labels about their experiences that in actuality are a huge essence of who they are. It's not out of rudeness, it's just impossible to really understand a lot of experiences we haven't been through, even if they are some of the most defining times for a person.
Here are a few examples: he has a chronic illness, she lost a child, he lost his job, she had a baby, they adopted a child, he cares for his aging parents, etc. Simple labels that describe huge experiences. Obviously there are tons, both good and bad. And often we don't know which ones other people are or have experienced, or how much they still deal with them on a daily basis.
It's easy (but sad) to say that someone lost a child, without thinking more than a few minutes what that person's life might be like now. Obviously we feel sad for anyone in that situation, but say it happened many years ago. It's likely that we don't think about it anymore, even if they are still thinking about it and hurting every day.
I have mostly been thinking about this because I have been thinking about myself (shocker), and how much I think about Ecuador as a defining experience for me. I still think about it every. But I doubt that anyone else thinks about it any more other than a random fact in passing that I spent some time in South America. Which is fine, it just serves as a good reminder for me to always work hard to remember I don't know where people are coming from. I don't know what they are dealing with, or what they have dealt with both good and bad. So the next time before I assume someone is one way or the other, I hope that I will be able to realize there is always more to the situation than what I see on the surface.
2 comments:
I half agree with you, and half don't. Sometimes we (I) like the broadness of the labels -- if people know you went through something painful, they (hopefully) know not to talk about it unless you bring it up, and will even skirt around painful subjects so you won't think of your own... Of course, sometimes I break that rule without thinking things through and feel horrible afterward.
The second category of labels that we (I) like are the ones that classify you with a class of people you admire. You can say you did a triathlon, but don't necessarily have to say that you barely finished the swim, or that you had to walk a little during the run, or that you hated every minute of it and have sworn off biking forever. You are still a triathlete. It's kind of like a dinosaur telling you over the phone that he's a dinosaur and you envision a t-rex or triceratops, but in reality he's the little kind of dinosaur that got eaten by mid-size mammals. Not that dinosaurs say much anymore.
Anyway, sometimes the labels are nice. And it makes it so much more interesting when you actually get to learn about the person's real experience as you get to know them.
That's exactly the way it is with a mission in two ways: the label " they served a mission in..." - response -"how nice, cool, etc." - no thought or understanding involved though. Yet those words encompass something that changed your life forever, 18-24 months of hard work, hard knocks (cool pun there!), and greater joy than ever known before - something that is thought about every day for the rest of your life (just like your Ecuador experiences - that's the second commonality). Now you can understand what it means when returned when missionaries say that there lives were changed and they still think about it practically every day. I guess that's what it's like for those who have lost children too -an experience that they never forget and has changed their very nature by the sheer force of the experience. I know Richard's grandmother still mourns the loss of her two children and thinks about them every day - she said the only good thing with gettting old, is she getting closer to being with them again. We could take offense and say " gee, grandma what about us?" or understand that the experience of loving and losing them changed her life profoundly. I look forward very much to meeting up with people I've cared about - especially those I've taught the gospel to and loved with all my soul and seeing that they made it. Thanks for the little reverie - .
Post a Comment