Thought for the Week
I don’t have New Year’s Resolutions. But I do have relationships. Although I sometimes wish I didn’t because, frankly, I’m not very good at them. I’m much more at home in Mitchland where I know every inch of the terrain. There, I create carefully constructed missives and distribute them to a world starving for my wisdom. It’s all so neat and tidy and…controllable.
However, it seems God is more interested in teaching me to abide along the messy mesas and precipitous canyons of OtherPeopleLand, where the terrain is constantly shifting and highly…uncontrollable.
I never know when God will send me to OtherPeopleLand. One Christmas, he set up a strategic meeting there between my adult daughter Beth (that’s her to the left) and me. And then a few years later, he did it again.
Building on what I’d previously learned, I talked to her as an adult, a confidante, confessing frustration at my glacial progress toward getting out of my head and focusing on Others, on talking less and listening more.
Beth guffawed, and went on to share some of her experiences outside Bethland. Some people, she admitted, perceive her as arrogant, as only interested in her own thoughts. Wait, I asked, was she talking about herself, or about me?
We laughed at the triumphal conversations we stage in our minds in which controllable people, unlike those in OtherPeopleLand, are unceasingly won over by our profound logic.
I was shocked. I’d always thought Beth was less like me than her older sibling. But it seems I was deceived by mere superficial differences. In many ways, she’s turned out to be even more like me (poor thing). Of course, they both have a lot of their mother in them too (thank God), as well that secret blend of herbs and spices that makes them completely themselves.
Interestingly, I’ve observed that each trip to OtherPeopleLand alters the terrain of Mitchland a little. In fact, these trips may be the only thing that alters Mitchland — and yet somehow, after each visit to OtherPeopleLand, Mitchland seems a little more real, a little more authentically me. And so it seems I do have a New Year’s Resolution, a scary but exhilarating one:
To spend more time in OtherPeopleLand.
People are absolutely fascinating all the while quite fragile at times. To interact with another human being is absolutely off the charts awesome.
I couldn’t agree more, Doug.
Other people’s stories are utterly captivating, Mitch. That’s why reading your blog or listening to others in Otherpeopleland is so interesting-and fun! In your case-funny! 🙂
Thanks, Nancy!
If only world leaders would spend a little more time there, we would never have another war! Here’s praying….
Amen, Caroll!
Amen, Caroll!
This post truly made me laugh! I can relate. My One Word for 2025 is “Relationships”. LOL I am already being challenged in this area. I know it will help me grow as a person, and become closer to “other people”, and closer to God.
No worthier objectives than those, Janet.
Mitch, I had to laugh at this post, as my New Year’s resolution (if I have one) is to listen more and talk less, and yes, I agree, Selfland changes as we get out of it more.
By the way, your daughter is adorable! She reminds me of my Kelly, both in the way she looks in the picture, the personality shining through (What is that on her head??), and what you’ve told us about her. Aren’t kids the best?!- part us, partly our spouses, and 100% their own persons. <3
I have no idea what she’s wearing, Annie (it was probably at a comic con or cosplay event), but I thinks she looks adorable in the picture too. Beth has a playful personality and an absurd sense of humor (can’t imagine where she got that from ;>).
Love this post! I wasn’t sure adult children belonged in OtherPeopleLand until my children became adults. Lol!
Lol indeed, San!
You illustrated quite nicely how years change perspectives. I can relate to this a bit, having two adult daughters myself.
They teach us so much.
Many teachers have assigned to this phenomenon the descriptor of higher alchemy 👌