It is a cloudy, foggy, cold day in Tulsa. I spent the night at a friends house last night with some other girls, and we had a good time. I woke up this morning glad that the weather was gray. I love this weather. So I decided I wasn’t ready to go home yet and I got bundled up got my coffee and went to the river. I walked across the bridge and onto the other side and sat on a bench looking out over the water. I watched the birds fly in random patterns, then dive down simultaneously to catch fish, or maybe they just do it because it’s fun. I listened to the noises of the factory behind me with its smoke rising high and blending in with the fog. I listened to the river rushing over the rocks, and the cars driving on the street across the way. I looked at downtown and saw only the bottom parts of the buildings as the fog hid the tops of them from me. I breathed it all in. I sat thinking about the week. It has been a strange week, but then again what weeks do you ever get to the end saying…”that was everything i expected”? I don’t think I”ve ever done that. Goodthing to that would be pretty boring.
As I sat on the bench I recalled all the reactions of my week. How I reacted to different things I was told, or the things that I saw. I thought about the reactions of my friends, or even strangers. There is so much that we react to, when things go bad we react negatively and when they go as we planned the reaction is positive. But of all the hundreds of reactions that occur throughout the day it is the strange reactions that we remember. When people choose to respond to something negative with an optimism we are moved. And it is the people whose lives are not ruled by thoughtless reactions that we remember. Those people that can step out of the circumstance and speak from a heart that sees more then just the immediate, but also the eternal. maybe if we could ascend the situations that we find ourselves in for a moment and see things for what they are and hear things for what they are instead of the immediate emotion they provoke in us, then we would be able to respond from something deeper and more meaningful.
Sometimes I think my immediate reaction is the deepest most authentic, but I think authenticity has never been an immediate thing, and it is more beneficial to the people I’m around to show them depth. Just some thoughts on the kind of person I would like to be.
“…I slipped away last night
Took me away from sight and the place I know.
All crushed upon my skin
This mess I put you in and the punch i thrown.
It was a strange reaction
for someone like you to remain on side
And in a chain reaction
I was down and calling for a place to hide….” Coldplay “your love means everything”
peace love react
