And Now It’s Up to You: What You Look For Will Be What You Find
(The final in the series of three for those walking to “Pomp and Circumstance” this spring…)
I heard a story when I was little. I’m not sure if it was from a preacher in the pulpit or a teacher in a classroom or my Granny while we were hanging the laundry on the line, but it stuck, and I remember it sometimes, usually right after I’m smugly disappointed in whatever I have found.
The story goes that a family is moving across the country to a new town and on the outskirts, they stop to fill up their car with gas. As the father gets out to pump the gas, he sees an old man sitting on a bench outside the store, so he asks him, “What kind of town is this we’re moving to?” To which the old man responds, “Tell me about the town that you are from.” The father tells him that the people where they’re from are wonderful. The churches are strong. The schools are great. The neighbors are helpful and friendly and everywhere you go people are kind. The old man nods his head and says definitively, “That is exactly the kind of town you’ll find here.”
A few days later another family moving into town stops to refuel as well. When the father gets out to pump his gas, he asks the old man on the bench the same question, “What kind of town is this we’re moving to?” To which the old man again responds, “Tell me about the town that you are from.” The father tells him that the town they are from is full of grumpy people. He says the churches are hypocritical and the schools are lousy. The people are gossipy and unhelpful, that they’re always more concerned about themselves than those around them. The old man nods and says definitively, “That is exactly the kind of town you’ll find here.”
What you’re looking for will usually end up being what you find.
Our world is full of awful stories. Stories of people who abuse children, people who blow up buildings, people who lie and cheat and steal and hate and kill. And if you want to believe that is the world, you surely can. Evil abounds.
However, the world is also full of ordinary heroes. People who smile when they hand you your bag of Chick-Fil-A, people who show up to help you chop and drag tree limbs when an ice storm or a tornado makes mashed potatoes of your yard, people who let you change lanes in traffic-- maybe even smiling and waving as they do, people who pick up your credit card when you drop it and then chase you down the street to return it to your hand.
These little angels hide in the corners of our days, lurking in simplicity, quietly softening the edges. If you look, you’ll see them everywhere, lifting us with their wings.
There are extraordinary heroes, too. Those who get in boats and paddle out to rescue people from their rooftops during floods, those who pull people from burning cars and jump in front of bullets so that others might have a chance to live. People who give kidneys and take in children and spend their days and nights and all their energy trying to help strangers in Ukraine.
Bad is everywhere. But so is good. What you’re looking for will be what you find. In such an uncompromising landscape, why not look for the better half?
And while you’re looking…be sure to keep an eye out for fun. Fun is the pixie dust of life.
Best-selling author, Daniel Coyle, says there are two kinds of fun. Fun One is the silly, giggly kind we all had at recess when we were in elementary school. The kind of experiences we had in the dugout and on the back of the bus… at Six Flags…in the summer on the tailgate of a truck or on a boat at the lake. The times we spend that are fun just because they are.
But there’s also another kind of fun that comes dressed in drastically different clothes. Coyle calls this Fun Two. Fun Two is what happens when you stand shoulder to shoulder with people you love and respect while doing really hard things. This is the kind of stuff that is almost always grueling. Sometimes it’s even scary. It’s the experience that makes you throw your shoulders back when you finish. Fun Two sustains you long after the giggling is gone.
In the movie, “A League of Their Own”, Geena Davis plays Dottie Hinson, the best player on an all-female baseball team. At the height of a grueling season filled with hardship after hardship and despicable conditions, she storms off the bus and exclaims to her manager Jimmy Dugan, played by the incomparable Tom Hanks, that she is done. Dot firmly says, “I quit.”
To which the reluctant manager replies, “You quit? You can’t quit? Why would you quit?”
“It’s just too hard,” she says.
And Jimmy Dugan delivers the line that coaches everywhere have up on their locker room walls: “Too hard? Of course it’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” Fun two—the grandest kind.
As you make your way, look for and find important causes. Problems worth solving. Situations worth changing. Better ways worth creating. And hitch your wagons to one another when you toil in their pursuit. Nothing fills a soul quite like locking arms with a whole bunch of others as you chase down worthwhile things.
Keep your eyes peeled for goodness, for work worth doing, for tiny glimmers of what might be. Good stuff is out there. Sometimes you just have to dig for it.
Sometimes you have to look hard.
But you can find it if you want to.
Sherri Coale
P.S. Daniel Coyle on Fun...