No, I don’t mean “time is hilarious.” Time is… peculiar.

This morning, as I was getting dressed, I looked at my forearm as it emerged from my sleeve and thought, “That looks like the forearm of an old man.” At 50, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me to have revelations like this, but it honestly surprised me. I stared at my arm blankly for a minute, thinking of the inevitability of the aging process, and the peculiar manifestation of it in the texture of that region of skin.

You’re History

Ten years ago, in 2002, I was not yet writing this blog. My mom had passed away in 2000, but my dad was alive and living with my sister in Georgia. I think Mom’s passing was one of the milestones that caused me to look in the mirror and say, “You’re on your own now. You can’t go running to Mom anymore for advice about how to live your life.”

The truth is, I really had leaned on Mom for advice over the years. Most of what I know (or think I know) about parenting, came straight from Mom. (The rest of it came from watching Mom and Dad. Dad wasn’t particularly verbal about parenting issues, at least with me, until the last five or six months of his life.) In contrast, Dad was someone who I saw as a “meaning of life” counsellor. Back in 2002, I didn’t lean on him for that kind of advice nearly as much as I should have.

Now, as I look in the mirror, I see more of Dad in the various aging signs of my body. I see Crow’s Feet and age spots that resemble his, and occasionally telltale signs like the aforementioned wrinkles in the skin of my forearm. I also see signs of stress, the loss of naiveté’, thousands of lessons learned, and more than a few sleepless nights.

Your History

Five years ago, in 2007, I had just started blogging, perhaps out of feeling a sense of mortality. What drove me to do so? Was it the arrogance of thinking that I possessed some collection of wisdom or truth that had somehow escaped others?

Actually, I think it was a realization that I wished I had listened more to things that Dad had said (or wanted to say), but that I had never taken the time to hear. I felt the need to capture, if for nobody else than my sons, some of the things that I always wanted to discuss with my Mom and Dad. I wanted to put down, in as permanent a form as possible, stories and lessons, observations and ideas, and all manner of things that I felt my sons might one day want to read. I wanted to answer, in advance, some of the questions that they might wish they’d asked, at some future date when I might not be there (or might not be able) to answer.

In the (generally forgettable) “I, Robot” with Will Smith, there is an interesting scene where Spooner (Will Smith) holds a conversation with Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell). The device Spooner uses to carry on this conversation projects a hologram of Lanning, and can respond interactively in Lanning’s voice and with his gestures, but only with the relatively limited information that Lanning programmed in.

It occurred to me a few years ago that this is what this blog is. This blog is a device for communicating, to those who would ask, the various things I thought about and felt strongly enough about to capture within a post here.

To be sure, a blog like this is a redacted version of my thoughts and feelings. This may capture the “text of my life,” but it quite obviously doesn’t state the subtext. I suppose one could argue that, with this blog in-hand and a decent knowledge of my life, you could figure out much of the subtext.

Along the way, I met some new people (other bloggers), found an audience (on occasion), and have compiled enough of my thoughts here to fill a book or two. (At least one book, “Don’t Blink,” a compilation of parenting tips and advice, will result from this.)

In Passing

Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve also lost several friends (including a fellow blogger or two). Where possible, I’ve gone back to read their Facebook pages, or their blogs. Sometimes, it’s not possible to read my friends’ thoughts anymore. My hope is that anyone whose life I’ve touched will be able to, if they choose, retroactively hear from me. This form of communication isn’t immortality, but it remains a way for express and demonstrate my love long after my passing.

You see, communication is what takes us from singular, isolated beings and makes us part of something larger than ourselves. When we choose to not communicate, and intentionally isolate or hide our thoughts and feelings from others, we become less. To be certain, we are safer, and not at risk of the pain when we withdraw and exclude. We also lose our ability to love and be loved.

My passing may bring an end to my ability to receive love, but why should it bring an end to me expressing it?

Regret

For example, just after the paparazzi have discovered that Anna (Julia Roberts) is at William’s (Hugh Grant) flat, her agents and security detail come to pick her up. Just before she leaves, she says, “I will regret this for the rest of my life.” Stunned, William stops and says, “If it’s OK with you, I shall feel quite the opposite.” Then, she opens the door, leaves, and the door closes behind her amidst the throng of photographers and reporters. As soon as the door closes, the camera starts to pull back, giving you the sense of William’s perspective, almost stumbling backward. Then, the camera reverses to show him moving in that direction, sitting on the steps, and the camera follows him with a subtle push.

The Unwitting Busboy

My next favorite scene shows the end of an evening that William and Anna have spent together, walking, talking, and exploring a walled garden. They stop off at her hotel, and as Anna goes up to her room, William gets some flowers to give to her. When he arrives at the door of her room, he is greeted by Jeff (Alec Baldwin), Anna’s boyfriend, who William was unaware of, and who Anna didn’t know had come to town. When Jeff sees William, he assumes that he’s a busboy, and immediately accepts the flowers for the room. To make matters worse (and to Anna’s horror), he asks William to take some dirty dishes from the room. William, sensing it’s the only possible way to respond, dutifully plays the role of the busboy, and cleans up the room. In a final insult, Jeff tips him.

Seasons

However, the most compelling cinematography of the entire film is captured in a brief scene that captures the passage of an entire year. This scene, coming on the heels of Anna leaving William with her words of regret (described above), has no dialog, but is masterfully told by Bill Withers’ haunting version of “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Perfect.

Now that we have established that, I can elaborate a bit. When I was growing up, I soon learned that, even though my Dad had more formal education than my Mom, it was difficult to beat Mom in a battle of wits. For most people, trying to debate Mom was like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. (She taught more than one Baptist minister to not say “Does anyone have anything else to share?”)

Mom also had a very well-developed sense of humor. Here, I will postulate that these two facts about my Mom are not coincidental, but have a causal relationship.

Kids are Funny

When my sons were very young, not longer after learning to speak, they wanted (like most kids) to tell jokes. Most likely, children watch adults sharing funny stories and want to participate in the process of making other people smile and laugh.

Typically, this begins with puns, and (not surprisingly, with my sons) that’s how things began with both of the boys. (To this day, we enjoy pun-fests that make normal people nauseous.) However, both of my sons quickly graduated from simple wordplay to more complex notions of “funny” pretty quickly.

My older son, when he was roughly 8 or 9, was riding in the car with me on the way to the local mall. As we pulled up, he saw the sign below:

He looked at the sign and said, “The heads and the tails don’t match.”

I had driven by this sign countless times, but had never noticed this. “Wow… you’re right. They don’t match.”

Without any hesitation he said, “That’s a horse of a different color.”

For a moment, I pondered whether or not some demon had possessed the child sitting next to me. How in the world did he find that phrase, and somehow pull it into that context? How did he do this so quickly? How did I not think of it first?

My strongest memory of my younger son’s foray into humor was in the midst of a discussion about braking systems in the car. He was very young (probably 7 or 8), and wanted to understand how the brakes worked. I explained the behavior of the disc rotors, and how the calipers held the brake pads, and squeezed the rotor to slow it down. I even did some demonstrations by sliding some paper between his fingers as he squeezed, to show the action of the calipers.

After the discussion reached a level where he was satisfied that he understood, he asked, “Dad, do the calipers ever go bad?”

“Well,” I replied, “I guess they could. Why?”

He smiled and said, “Wouldn’t that make them ex-calipers?”

Yes, this joke was rooted in a fairly simple pun, but the setup he provided (that something gone bad might yield the prefix “ex”) showed that he was doing more than just noting words that had similar sounds or parallel meanings. He was using a joke to demonstrate understanding. Once more, I was annoyed that I hadn’t thought of the joke first.

“Funny You Should Say That”

Obviously, my wife and I never hesitated to make jokes in front of our sons, and so much of their attempts to be funny was simple mimicry. However, there were many occasions where one of the boys wouldn’t understand a joke, and would want an explanation of what made it funny. We never hesitated to explain those, even though they were sometimes more complex.

Over time, my sons both learned that all humor is rooted in two things: parallelism and surprise. The first component, parallelism, can have many forms, but ultimately says “This thing that you know over here? Well, if you put it over here just right, it fits too.” The second component, surprise, comes from how unrelated the parallel situations are. For example:

“Isn’t it ironic that the stationery store had to relocate?”

The parallel comes from the homophonic relationship “stationary” and “stationery.” (This, by definition, tends to make this a joke that works better when spoken than read.) The surprise of the joke comes from the reality that stores frequently relocate, so temporarily substituting “stationary” creates cognitive dissonance.

Humor as a Gateway to Education

How does all this relate to my assertion at the top that there is some kind of correlation between intelligence and humor? Here’s my take:

When my sons were small, and wanted to create their own jokes, they realized that they would have to look for parallels. As they did, the trial and error of joke telling taught them where the parallels applied, and where they didn’t. As they grew older and started to study the humor of others, they began to find other realms of knowledge that they could reference with humor. For example:

Son: “Hey… do you have any sodium bromide?”

Me: “Why would I have sodium bromide?”

Son: “Wrong answer Dad. You’re supposed to say ‘Na Bro.’”

(For the non-scientist, “NaBr” is the chemical designation for sodium bromide.)

Mind-maps and Parallels

If you’ve ever used mind-maps to take notes or organize your thoughts, you will appreciate the value of being able to spot parallels from different subject areas. When you are faced with an unfamiliar subject, one of the first tasks is to figure out the relationships between the various elements within that realm.

If, as you dig into a subject, you begin to see things that “feel familiar,” you can start to do some preliminary grouping and organizing of your mind map, based on a parallel that you already know. If a given pattern or parallel does not apply, your familiarity with the previous subject will make it quite clear where the disparity is, and will illuminate areas where the pattern works.

Holding Patterns and Pun & Games

As I’ve watched my sons move up through high school and off to college, one of the most notable of their characteristics is their ability to learn new subjects and adapt to new environments. I attribute this to their ability to hold and maintain the patterns of element relationships within a subject area, and transfer those patterns to new subjects they encounter. I’ve long since lost count of the number of times they’ve said something along the lines of, “So when I heard this, I immediately realized it was like ___.”

So the next time you’re making silly puns with your 7 year-old and teaching him or her to follow suit, don’t think of it as immature, childish fun. Instead, think of it as preparing them for a lifetime of learning.

That’s exactly what you’re doing.

We discussed a wide range of topics. Last night, while shopping, we’d discussed the design of intake systems for performance cars (the merits of hood scoops versus cold-air intakes). Today we talked of Facebook, parent-child relationships, and sexuality. In other words, just another typical conversation with one of my sons.

In the middle of his junior year of college and with his older brother married and living 90 miles East of us, you would think that I would be accustomed to my younger son being four hours-away. You would think that him being home for several weeks over the Christmas break wouldn’t create an intense sense of loss as I watched him drive away today. You would think I’d have seen this coming.

You would be wrong.

Mirror, mirror…

Both of my sons, for good or bad, look quite a bit like me. Just yesterday, when my younger son went to get his license renewed, someone who didn’t know him said, “Are you Tim’s son?” The family resemblance is strong enough that a friend of mine from high school, not having seen me for over twenty years, met my older son and immediately asked the same question. Both of my sons have heard “You look so much like your dad” that they’ve long since started to expect to hear it.

Today, as we sat and talked, I noticed that he was briefly distracted, watching someone intently as they walked from the drink dispenser back toward the counter. I turned to look. My son had been distracted by seeing a toddler step away from her mother at the drink dispenser, and wander off looking for her father.

I smiled to myself. The boys don’t just look like me.

“Pass the changing roles please…”

Several years ago, just prior to my father’s death, Dad came to live in our house. During those all-too-short months, some of the most remarkable experiences I had were our late-night conversations about theology. Dad, having been formally trained at a Southern Baptist Seminary, took great joy in wandering down lesser-travelled conversational paths in his search for the truth, and this became even more evident late at night when he would suddenly become unusually talkative.

During one of our more memorable conversations, we were discussing the Biblical story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). Dad looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Did you ever wonder what Jesus wrote on the ground?” He was speaking of verse 8, where Jesus writes something in the dirt with his finger, prompting the religious leaders that were about to stone the woman to drop the stones and walk away. Dad continued by saying, “I wonder if he wrote the name of a mistress of one of the men about to stone her, or maybe some other shameful secret that all of them knew.” We never came to any solid conclusions, but I loved having this kind of conversation with him.

Today, sitting across the table from my son, I asked him for his opinion of a project that I was considering. I asked because the project might be considered controversial to some of my theologically conservative friends, and I was concerned about the potential reflection it might have on our church, and who people perceive me to be.

He looked at me and said, “Well, I don’t remember Jesus worrying about spending too much time around prostitutes and tax collectors. It seems to me that he hung around with all sorts of people, and not just the religious ones.” The people in question aren’t prostitutes or tax collectors, but they’re definitely a group that most Christians spend little time on or with. As of now, I haven’t yet decided whether or not to take on the project, but I found my son’s comments thought-provoking, to say the least.

Life Shared vs Barter-dom

As I sat in my car, watching him drive away, I suddenly realized why my own father took such joy in such conversations. It wasn’t because he wanted to pass along some grand theological truth to me. In fact, I doubt that it mattered too much to Dad what it was we talked about.

Dad knew, as I’m beginning to understand, that being intimately connected to someone has little to do with the exchange of favors. We don’t create intimacy and love by saying “If you’ll do ____ for me, I’ll do _____ for you.” Sadly, many relationships are built on such bartering. I know of at least one couple that treats sex this way: “We can have sex if you’ll take out the garbage this week and help me get the house clean.”

Last weekend, my younger son turned 21, and I joked that now my parenting duties were complete. My friends reminded me that there were many more things left for me to take care of, not the least of which would be grandchildren. Even so, him reaching this age does mark an important milestone, and it caught me a bit off guard. He’s on a different road now.

Perhaps it’s my own feelings of mortality, but I was struck by wondering how many more of his birthdays would I be blessed to enjoy? How many more casual lunches would we have where we could pick and choose the topics randomly, completely unconcerned with the need to discuss a particular subject? How much more life would we share?

Road Scholar

Just before I backed out of the parking space and started to drive home, I posted on Facebook, “And just like that, he’s gone again.” I don’t know, as my son officially gets on this particular road, what lies ahead of him, but I feel quite confident of his ability to navigate it well.

As I made my turn and went the other way, I did so with caution, blinking hard. For some reason, my vision had just become quite blurry.

This particular morning was different though. This morning, for the first time in twenty years, there were three people in the house on Christmas morning, and not four. Now the old question goes: when your son gets married, are you losing a son, or gaining a daughter? As I sat in the stillness of Christmas morning, it didn’t seem like a rhetorical question.

Lost & Found

On Christmast Eve, as we exchanged gifts at my older son’s house, it seemed clear that I had gained a daughter. We had transparently added her to all of our traditions: we now had a stocking for her hanging from the mantle, we had shopped for presents for her with the same sense of joy that had filled us when shopping for the boys, and she now found herself the victim of the friendly razzing that goes on in a close-knit family.

However, the feeling on Christmas morning was more somber. With nobody else awake and stirring around, I was alone with my thoughts, and suddenly acutely aware of the change.

“This is how it begins, I suppose…” I mumbled to myself. Soon enough, everyone would be up, the traditional chocolate-chip pancakes would be cooking, and we would (since Christmas fell on a Sunday this year) get ready for church.

I stopped and thought about this. Since my older son wouldn’t be here to eat his share of the pancakes, there might be some extra for me. Rather than taking joy in this, I felt a twinge that accompanied the thought.

Christmas Passed

Thankfully, the melancholy didn’t last long. As I sat, I suddenly remembered a similar morning 28 years ago: my first Christmas morning away from Mom & Dad, celebrating it instead with my wife of (at that time) six months.

Suddenly, the melancholy was replaced with an onslaught of memories of the intervening years, and how traditions began in our house to replace and supplant the ones I’d shared with my parents. In a few years, my younger son would be following suit, celebrating Christmas in his home, and not mine.

Sooner than I’m probably prepared for, both of the boys may be blessed with children. If so, then the traditions they forge with their families will become something precious for them to enjoy, though for a shorter time than they expect, and then someday look back on as I do now.

If only they can be so lucky.

Merry Christmas!

However, there are situations where doing things exactly the same way, every time is absolutely essential, and potentially life-saving. Consider the longitivtiy-enhancement of putting on your seatbelt, washing your hands after going to the bathroom, or putting your foot on the brake before you putting an automatic transmission in Drive. (To be fair, the second one is a bit dated, since the “unintended acceleration” accidents that brought the demise of the Audi 5000 pressured most automakers to install shift interlocks that force this behavior.)

In less serious realms, this notion of boring repeatability can not only promote good habits, it can reduce stress on those you work with. This past week, I was reminded of this when I was thrust again into the team environment of a movie production crew.

“Roll sound…”

The movie in question is a smaller budget feature titled “Bad Blood: The Hatfields & McCoys,” directed by Fred Olen Ray. When Fred decided to shoot this in Kentucky, he brought along with him a core production staff that included: an Assistant Director (AD), the Cinematographer/Director of Photography (DP), the Production Coordinator, the Lead Makeup Artist, the Gaffer, and several others. Locally, he hired Location Sound (me), the First Assistant Camera (1st AC), the Key Grip, several Production Assistants (PA’s), an Assistant Makeup Artist, and several others. In other words, we had a small army of production people, many of whom had never met, much less worked together.

Now, if you haven’t been on a movie set before, calling it “controlled chaos” is a bit of an overstatement. It’s not nearly that controlled.

Any given scene in a movie is made up of numerous shots. Each of those shots is a combination of light and sound, all coordinated to communicate information and emotion. In addition to the actors, every person listed above has a role that plays into the generation of light (gaffers), the reflection of light (gaffers and makeup artists), the capturing and recording of that light (grips, camera assistants, and the cinematographer), the generation of sound (actors, production assistants, and foley artists), and the capturing and recording of those sounds (yours truly, and sometimes the cinematographer).

Left Brain vs Right Brain

The person unfamiliar with actual movie sets might think that all of the activities above are managed and coordinated by the Director. After all, isn’t “directing” people what he or she is supposed to do? Well, that’s true, but it rarely happens… directly. Usually, there is an intermediate involved, who is typically the 1st or 2nd AD.

The reason for having AD’s on the set is that the Director, being an artistic, frequently visual person, rarely exhibits the personality traits necessary to coax a team of people into coordinated activity. It’s been said that everyone on a movie set is supposed to hate the AD’s by the end of a movie shoot, because this person’s role is to demand adherence to process, with almost total disregard for whose feelings are hurt.

The HD AD: The Not-so-Benevolent, Hyperactive Dictator

While the Director is being warm and fuzzy with actors (who tend, by their nature, to have more sensitive egos) and Producers (who really shouldn’t appear on location, but sometimes do), the AD’s are busy making sure the trains run on time. The Director has the luxury of being warm and fuzzy–the AD’s do not. If, for whatever reason, someone does something that screws up a take, it wastes the time of every actor and every crew member.

As a result, the AD’s should make you feel bad for doing something stupid that wastes people’s time. You should learn quickly to not make that mistake again. The production schedule, which directly or indirectly affects the personal and professional lives of everyone involved, isn’t something anyone should trifle with, even on micro-budget productions. On larger productions, delays can become hideously expensive.

On our set, the AD had a nice balance of hyperactivity and obsessive-compulsive-disorder. Rarely, if ever, did he stop moving and conversing and listening and moving some more. He was always listening to a response, giving direction, asking questions, or looking for a reason that we weren’t rolling the camera RIGHT NOW.

Being predisposed toward action this way creates a wonderful tension between the creative types (typically the DP, but to some degree, the Director) and the demands of the shooting schedule. While the Director and the DP are aware of the schedule, the AD knows the schedule. Knowing the schedule backward, forward, and upside-down means that the AD can suggest changes to the shooting schedule based upon unexpected events, such as props not being available, actors not being in the right costume, and so on.

The OCD AD: Obsessed with Process

Because the AD is ultimately responsible for making the trains run on time, he/she is constantly pushing the metaphorical gas pedal to the floor, racing the production toward the next shot. In doing so, they create a sense of urgency that is contagious.

Being in charge of sound, I was toting around a battery-operated field recorder (Edirol R-44) to capture sound from the various microphones we were using. Since it ran on batteries, I was constantly in fear of losing power in the middle of a take. (Having the batteries die in mid-take would not have killed us for this production, because we had redundant systems in place, but I still didn’t want be a potential source of delays.)

To make sure I was never surprised by a lack of charge in the batteries, my pre-shot routine became:

1. Establish the audio connection to the camera
2. Set the recorder to the “paused but ready to record” mode
3. Confirm the levels on the meters are acceptable
4. Check the battery level
5. Determine the best location for the boom mic, and how it might have to move during the course of the shot

By doing this the exact same way, every time, I had to deal with dying batteries only once during the 8 days of shooting, and this was a situation where I had already replaced the batteries twice (we were quite a distance from the base camp, where the rest of my batteries were stored). Even then, I wasn’t surprised by the situation, and was able to warn the DP that we would not have a redundant recording of audio until I could get some fresh batteries brought in from the base camp.

Now, this might not sound unusual to you, especially if you are a detail or process-oriented person, or don’t know my proclivity for spontaneous and unpredictable behavior. I am the antithesis of a process-person, as the repetitive nature of such behavior bores me to tears.

Random Acts of Regularity

In spite of this tendency of mine toward randomness, I found that the regular routine of the AD inspired me to take on (and maintain) a perfectly repeatable routine within my responsibilities on-set. Not only did I accept the routine, but I found a strange form of comfort in it. Doing things exactly the same way, every time, gave me confidence that I wasn’t going to hear the dreaded “Waiting on Sound” call from the AD.

My son said, “Weirdos like my Dad,” with a laugh. While I appreciate the fact that not everyone has the desire to write a blog, I think everyone should. Here’s why:

1. Because it helps you verbalize/organize your thoughts/opinions
   a. Shape your opinions based on voices outside AND inside your own head, don’t be a “ditto-head”
   b. If you write for an audience that may not agree with you, you’ll make a more coherent argument
   c. In the process of organizing your thoughts, you’ll learn things you wouldn’t have otherwise
2. Because it contributes something
   a. Link to: http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
   b. Contributing anything helps us move out of a “consumerism mode”
3. Because it makes you a better writer
   a. The only way to get better at something is to do it, and by blogging, you get to write about what YOU think is important
   b. Over time, readers will discover what you’ve written and will give you feedback
4. Because it’s “live”
   a. In sharp contrast to TV, and in much the same way as we find with live theater, feedback from an audience (even if you don’t engage them in extended conversations) adds depth to the experience
   b. As people respond, if you engage them in discussion, you have the opportunity to learn even more, or possibly just expand further on a topic than you had originally thought was appropriate.

That, my friends, is why you should blog.

What Kind of Love?

What kind of love did this man have, that he would go down to the end of the road, every day, and watch for the son who had scorned his love and provision? What kind of love compels someone to wait patiently, even when love isn’t reciprocated, on the outside chance that someday, they will return?

Depending on the day, the father probably started doubting himself. “What did I do?” he must have asked, or perhaps “What did I say that drove my son to leave me this way?”

Can you imagine how, with each passing day, he might have been more and more discouraged? Did he ask about his son in town, or pester his son’s friends about his whereabouts? Did he go roaming through the countryside, searching high and low? Was he endlessly chasing after his son, never truly letting him go? Perhaps the father had an even greater love than that.

What if the father loved the son so much, that he hoped for the son to find the desire of his heart, no matter what that might be? Is it possible that the father loved the son enough to say “goodbye,” knowing that the son’s pursuit of his dream might never lead him home? What if the son said, “I never want to hear from you, ever again.” Did he love his son enough to honor the desire of his son’s heart this way?

With no way to know if his son was alive or dead, the father did the only thing he knew to do: wait.

Prodigal People

It’s been my experience that most of us have “prodigal people” in our lives. Sometimes, they “go to a far country” without leaving our house. Sometimes, they spurn our affection and provision. Sometimes, they must say “goodbye” to us in some way, so they can pursue the desire of their heart.

How will you respond? Will you arrogantly and smugly give them up for dead? Will you hope for them to suffer, and come crawling back to your door? Will you sit and dwell on the many ways of saying “I told you so” or something similarly caustic, should they ever darken your door?

(By no means am I suggesting that we should martyr ourselves for those we love, and let them be abusive toward us. Those we love clearly must understand that words and actions have consequences, even in the midst of love. Those consequences, however, should not include witholding love.)

What then, from their perspective, would they expect to hear upon their return? Based on how you’ve behaved in the past, would they expect to be welcomed home, as the father welcomed his long, lost son? Or, will they expect to hear indignant, selfish words (however justified) of your pain?

Selfish or Selfless?

What if they are unsure? What if, as they approach the house (metaphorically speaking), they are too frightened to walk up to the front door and knock? Is it possible that the only way they will summon the courage to “come home” is if they see you, standing at the end of the road, waiting for them?

It’s true that if you do this, you may wait forever, and feel the emptiness of uncertainty. But then, who wants to be loved with a love that risks nothing? Who wants a love that costs nothing? Wouldn’t each of us, if we are wearing the Prodigal’s shoes, want to be loved with a love that waits patiently, forever? Wouldn’t each of us want to be loved with a love that selflessly sends us off to pursue what we desire, instead of selfishly holding onto us for themselves?

Stand. Watch. Wait.

Forever.