Suddenly I See

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Let's just call this "Side Notes"

I love this picture of Rodger.

Photobucket

It makes my heart warm and my mouth smile. Just looking at it I can feel his kind heart. His understanding heart. His non-judgemental heart. Will that ever rub off on me? That needs to happen (soon).

Side note: I learned a small life lesson from Rodger the other day. He was telling me how he was with two people who were arguing over how they felt about a political issue. And even though I wasn't there I got all in a huff about it. Because really how can anyone not see things the same way I do? I said to Rodger, "well did you tell them how you felt?". And he just said "no, what difference does it make? What they think doesn't change my opinion and what I think isn't going to change their opinion." Simple as that and he changed the subject. I have thought about this pretty much every day since we had this discussion. No big thing to him, huge thing to me because I need to be more like this. I need to know my truth and let other people know their truth. I appreciate that it's so easy to him but something that quite frankly I struggle with every day.

Another side note that I was just reminded of: another great man in my life, my dad, always told me growing up, particularly in my very opinionated college years, that I need to be tolerant of intolerance (i.e. people who aren't open-minded about the same things that I am open-minded about). I always thought this was ludicrous. Why would I be tolerant of intolerance? That's just ridiculous. Then sometime in the last year or so it clicked. I believe it was somewhere around the time that I read an interview with Brad Pitt where he was denouncing Christianity and saying that it was useless. How can someone so liberal not understand other's needs for their own beliefs? How can he assume that what he believes or doesn't believe should work for everyone else? And I saw it on a smaller level that was me. And I finally understood what my dad was trying to tell me all these years. It's an invaluable lesson I learned. It's really amazing that the older I get the smarter my parents get. And the older I get the more I realize that their advice is always right. I guess you just have to be at a certain place in life before that advice can be right for you.

So back to that picture. I took a copy of it to work. To remind me to be a little more like Rodger. To keep my mouth shut more and my heart open more. A lesson I will be forever learning.

Side Note: I hope that my coworkers don't think it's weird that I just taped this picture on the wall next to my desk. You know, kind of like in college I took a class called "Religion and the Sustainable Planet", (it makes sense if you went to ULV and are at all familiar with Core Classes) and there was this girl in there who brought a framed picture to every class of her boyfriend and set it on the desk in front of her. That was weird but mostly hilarious.

6 comments:

vickie said...

This is by far the best post in quite some time, and I mean no disservice to your past ones, that were great, but this was AMAZING.

I cried when you talked about Dad and then laughed out loud, literally, when I read about you posting the photo at work and laughed even HARDER when I read the part about the girl in college and her framed picture of her BF... Who was that?

vickie said...

And on another note, why did she think that was okay? Really on her desk in class?

Pam said...

I just had Dad read your post. Very nice and Rodger is right. My opinion will never change someone else's. All it does is end up in an argument and seeing who can talk louder than the other person. My opinion only.

Eliza said...

Love it all, and you are so right!

Peggy said...

I just love Rodger! Not only is he a cutie, but he is very wise! Your dad is right, too. Am I the only one who thinks he looks like Ryan Seacrest?

Rachel Elizabeth said...

I have a really hard time respecting intolerance. Its something I guess I need to work on but usually I see intolerance as ignorance. Brad Pitt's comment would be considered intolerance to me.