“Life is change. Growth is
optional. Choose wisely.” ~Karen Kaiser Clark
Loneliness. Fear. Stress.
These are words that come to mind when faced with a new situation. Many people cower in fear and refuse to face
these changes. I recently have moved from a medium-sized town to a huge city. Adjusting to a new environment is hard to
describe. You see people you don’t
know. New grocery stores. A new gym.
However, perspective is a worthwhile teacher and I know I have come to
this new location for a higher purpose.
So what should I do? Hide in my apartment and sink into depression and
despair, lamenting over my new home. Or
do I accept it? Take it in stride?
Embrace it?
Our lives are filled with both joyous and devastating events. We may experience the birth of a child and
the death of a loved one in the same week.
Both experiences take adjustments, although death will also be filled
with grief and sadness. New environments
take responding to. New experiences
demand that you focus on them, fight through them, and accept them as they are.
Recently I have been trying to connect on Facebook with former friends and
many of the students that I taught for the last 21 years. In the past, I
noticed that I tried to send requests to those that were just like me (white,
male, heterosexual, Christian). Recently
I decided the send requests out to all sorts of friends, students and acquaintances
(black, female, gay and non-Christian).
Do I appreciate their perspective or necessarily agree with everything
they say or believe? Of course not. But to embrace the human experience I want to
see it from their eyes. I want to
understand how they think and feel, so I can empathize with their experiences
as well.
For some reason we think that people are different in a big city, but I have
experienced so many nice people already.
They say “excuse me” at the grocery store, they talk to you at the park,
and they move things for you at your new job without grumbling. They experience life like you do. They put their clothes on the same way. They laugh and cry and experience pain at the
loss of the things they care about. In
the end, humans are much more alike than we are different. I am a Christ-follower and I am not ashamed
of that, but I want to understand the perspective of these who are not.
The bottom line is this: embrace
life. Embrace its joy and its pain. Embrace the sadness and the loneliness. Embrace the unique perspectives of those who
are not the same as you. Celebrate the
accomplishments of those around you and cry with those who mourn. As much as I
want to run a marathon, climb a mountain, or win a Nobel prize, very few individuals
accomplish those things. I can, however,
experience life to its fullest by embracing the triumphs as well as the
obstacles that come my way.
I have chosen this new life as a college professor, so I must experience
the pain of being away from ones I love and adjusting to a new
environment. To do this, I must trust in
the strength God has given me. The only
alternative is to not reach the potential that I know I have inside me or to
check out of life and chose not to change and grow. Personally, I chose to grow, struggle through
the uncomfortable feeling of new things, and find that potential.
Failure is always a possibility, but I will never know triumph unless I
embrace the possibility of failure, which means accepting my own frail
humanity.
