What We Bring With Us

Weekly wisdom to help you take a pause in your day, in 2 minutes or less.

A SHORT STORY

I’ve been finding myself working hard to reframe my thinking when dealing with the volume of problems I solve in my work life. Perhaps you can relate?

Recently, I came across a story from the great writer Annie Lamott that has been helping me in this process.

In the story, a traveler who comes upon a new town asks an old man sitting by the road, “What kind of people live in this town?”

The old man asks, “What were the people like in the last town you visited?” The traveler replies that they were mean, selfish, and dishonest. The old man says, “You will find the same people here.”

A second traveler asks the same question. The old man again asks about the previous town. The second traveler describes the people as kind, generous, and welcoming. The old man replies, “You will find the same people here.”

I’ve been recalling this story each morning to remind myself that we find what we bring with us, and that our perspectives and expectations shape our reality.

In these difficult times, the story reminds me that we don’t find our way home by waiting for the world to change. We find it by changing how we meet it, choosing love, hope, and connection, even when life is hard.

What might change if you met today a little differently?

A POEM

“More than This” by David Kirby

When you tell me that a woman is visiting the grave
of her college friend and she’s trying not to get irritated
at the man in the red truck who keeps walking back and forth
and dropping tools as he listens to a pro football
game on the truck radio, which is much too loud, I start
to feel as though I know where this story is going,
so I say Stop, you’re going to make me cry.

How sad the world is. When young men died in the mud
of Flanders, the headmaster called their brothers out
of the classroom one by one, but when the older brothers
began to die by the hundreds every day, they simply handed
the child a note as he did his lessons, and of course the boy
wouldn’t cry in front of the others, though at night
the halls were filled with the sound of schoolboys sobbing
for the dead, young men only slightly older than themselves.

Yet the world’s beauty breaks our hearts as well:
the old cowboy is riding along and looks down
at his dog and realizes she died a long time ago
and that his horse did as well, and this makes him
wonder if he is dead, too, and as he’s thinking this,
he comes to a big shiny gate that opens onto a golden
highway, and there’s a man in a robe and white wings,
and when the cowboy asks what this place is, the man tells
him it’s heaven and invites him in, though he says animals
aren’t allowed, so the cowboy keeps going till he comes
to an old rusty gate with a road full of weeds and potholes
on the other side and a guy on a tractor, and the guy
wipes his brow and says you three must be thirsty,
come in and get a drink, and the cowboy says okay,
but what is this place, and the guy says it’s heaven,
and the cowboy says then what’s that place down
the road with the shiny gate and the golden highway,
and when the guy says oh, that’s hell, and the cowboy
says doesn’t it make you mad that they’re pretending
to be you, and the guy on the tractor says no,
we like it that they screen out the folks who’d desert
their friends. You tell me your friend can’t take it
any more, and she turns to confront the man
who’s making all the noise, to beg him to leave her alone
with her grief, and that’s when she sees that he’s been
putting up a Christmas tree on his son’s grave
and that he’s grieving, too, but in his own way,
one that is not better or worse than the woman’s,
just different, the kind of grief that says the world
is so beautiful, that it will give you no peace.

Grateful,

Michael