Did you see last night’s episode of This is Us? If not (or if you don’t watch the show), don’t worry I only reference it because the theme is us. So no spoiler coming, other than to say, just like as seen with the characters we live with our eyes so zeroed in on self that we miss seeing the hurt, fear, complexities and brokenness of those all around us. And when we don’t see it we can’t enter in, and without others to enter in, people feel isolated and alone.
Not by chance, my daughter and I were just talking about this two days ago.
It’s easy for any of us to feel like no one understands or cares about us. It’s easy in our culture of comparison to go down the self-spiral of thinking we are the only ones feeling a certain way. It’s easy to camp out on our struggles and insecurities and forget other people are struggling too.
But if only we could look outside of ourselves long enough to see we would realize we’re all in the same boat. We all long to be known, to be understood, to have someone to walk alongside us. Someone to call, someone we know cares and is in our court.
Too often we mistakenly assume others have this. It may be because they seem to have their “people” or always wear a smile. Or, we may prejudge someone as unfriendly, when we have no idea what’s going on in their life. The only way we will ever know is by reaching out to initiate to get to know someone better.
Sadly we don’t do this much today. I think we’ve forgotten what it means to love our neighbor, again because we are so stuck on self. Maybe not just ourself, but our schedules, our family, our clique. And so we miss living life on a mission.
A mission without agenda to simply love. To be a friend. To get to know someone and enter in. To extend compassion and to see we are more alike than we even knew.
You see, when we make life a mission not about self, but seeking out others, a funny thing happens. We find more joy, satisfaction and contentment. Whereas when all we can think of is our problems, our lacks, our emotions, life can become pretty hopeless and empty.
So what if we all started to see our neighborhoods, our jobs, the organizations we are a part of, the people we keep bumping up against as opportunities to get to know and love others? What if we got out of our comfort zones? our holy huddles? our heads?
I wonder how that would bring hope and healing even to just one person? Though I think it would have a much larger impact.
Just last week neighbors who we have only met/eaten with once before, texted a last minute invite to us and nine other phone numbers (only one of which I knew who it was) to come over for a potluck supper and game night. We couldn’t make it, but do you know how much I loved the fact this family thought to do it and include us? They didn’t let the fact that all the guests wouldn’t know each other, weren’t their closest friends, or have different age kids keep them from initiating.
What might this look like for you? Your family? I would love to hear your stories. My daughter has one from later on the very day we talked about this! By God’s grace may all of our eyes be opened to see where and how we can love others better. And may we find it to be an awesome and welcomed distraction from self!
