Thoughts on Empathy, Story and the Death of an Anonymous Child

This past weekend in Oklahoma was a cold one. Temperatures were well under freezing, the sun was hidden behind the clouds, and snow flurries were fluttering down from the icy grey side outside the windows of our home.

For some reason, it’s weekends like this when watching Harry Potter seems like the only thing to do. So, that’s what my wife, Sarah, and I did. We made a frozen pizza, poured some wine and turned on the tube to watch the most-recent Harry Potter spin-off, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

Sarah and I weren’t half-way into the movie when the first death occurred on-screen. The murder wasn’t of a significant character; however, it was of a child. A baby.

In the film, you didn’t actually see the crime committed, but you knew what happened. The movie’s villain had just taken over a family’s home that he would be using as his ‘headquarters,’ and after he murdered the adults, he stumbled upon a nursery with a baby playin in its crib. The scene shows the villain dismissing his followers to the other room, and as they close the door, the villain raises his weapon to commit the crime. The entire scene is fleeting, running under 30 seconds, and then, it’s off to to the next scene, as if the child and its’ family had never existed.

We continued to watch the film, and about an hour after the scene of the anonymous family being killed, my mind went back to them.

I started to think about how I could watch something so awful and not feel anything. Sure, there was an initial shock, but overall, I felt no which way about the family that was killed. It was a short scene in a long movie with no-name characters. But life was still lost, and it had not affected me.

I began to contrast this same situation with another character, another baby, in the World of Harry Potter - Harry Potter himself. We are introduced to him a 10-year-old kid, and we get certain glimpses at his life as a baby along the journey of his story. We see how he was loved, how his parents sacrificed their lives for them and how he ultimately, avenged their deaths and saved the ‘wizarding world,’ and i’m quite certain that if he had died somewhere along the way, I would have felt something. I would have been affected.

Harry Potter had a name, and I knew it. He also had a story, and I knew that too.
The child in ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ had no name, and there was no way to know it. The child, while young, also had a story, and I didn’t know that either.

Knowing one another’s stories is important. It’s so important that, in my opinion, without knowing others’ stories, would would lack the ability to empathize.

I have spent countless hours with Harry Potter. Reading the books and watching the movies has occupied a portion of almost every ‘snow day’ i’ve had since I was an 11-year-old boy sitting by the fire at my parents house. I took time to know him.

On the other hand, I had no time to get to know the anonymous child, mostly because the director didn’t allow for it, but the lesson rings true: To know someone, to spend time with them and to hear their story changes our entire paradigm when faced with loss, gain, adversity, celebration, misunderstanding and triumph.

When we know another’s story, it changes our life, and it changes our ability to interact with theirs.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Knowing story leads to empathy.

Pressing Pause

It’s 7:08a, and it’s mostly dark in our home. There’s a lamp on in the corner of the house, while the sun is just starting to peak through some of the slow rolling clouds outside the window in the den. It’s chilly outside, too. This is the first time this fall that we’ve needed to turn on our heater, so our home has that warm, welcoming feeling as you walk across the rug to sit on the couch with a morning cup of coffee.

While I sit here, I’m thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with a friend, who’s also a writer. We were talking about why we never talk about our writing or why we never promote it to anyone. We talked about how we would much rather our writing stay tucked away for the world not to see. Not because our writing isn’t good, his is great, but because the world will find it and can ruin it. We talked about how the world can also ruin us. How something we write or have written in past years could be dug up and spun into something it was never meant to be. How someone can twist our words, once used for good, and turn them into something damning. Because that’s what the world wants to see these days.

The world wants to see perfection. It wants to see justice. It wants to see reckoning.
And I don’t blame it. I want those things too.

But now, the world leaves little room for mistakes, little room for grace and little room for peace.

I hope we soon found out how we can have all of these and hold them equally, without the objective of ruining each others lives, but rather have an objective of help other build better ones.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Don’t hit cancel; press pause.

Leading with Light

I’ve never started a blog post off with a definition before, but I’m going to revert back to middle school on this one and kick it off with this from Merriam Webster.

Leader - “a powerful person who controls or influences what other people do : a person who leads a group, organization, country, etc.”

I’ve never looked up the definition of leader before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting something that vague.

Growing up, we’re all taught that leaders are successful.
Leaders of the class.
Captains of the team.

The list goes on.

But the word “leader” alone leaves much to be desired. Sure, it’s a powerful person in control.
But what about the adjectives that should go alongside leader? The traits.

Good leader.
Team leader.
Brave leader.

The list goes on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the type of leader I am and about the type of leader I want to be.

Right now, I’m not a very positive leader. I lean toward pessimism, and I that brings down the team I’m on.
Rather, I want to be a team builder, a contagiously positive leader, and I want to be a leader others look to as a source of sunshine.

Leaders are all around us, and as we are led, we can learn how we currently lead and how we want to lead. There is always a chance to grow, to learn and to lead.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Lead with Light.

Holiday Thoughts in October

It’s October 28, and that means the holidays are creeping up. Halloween, but also Thanksgiving and Christmas. This will be the first year for the holidays for my wife and I. The first year we’ll have been married for them, and the first year in our own home for them. Exciting times.

Planning for the holidays takes a lot of planning. I never gave it much thought before because I’ve never had to, but it seems to take some thought to figure out traditions, meals and activities, especially if one is hosting the holiday themselves. It would be absurd to hold oneself to a movie’s standard of holiday festivities, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Call me Chevy Chase.

I’m writing this to hold myself accountable - I don’t want to be consumed by the holidays and miss the real meaning for each celebration. I’m the type of person who wants everything to be perfect, always. And that is impossible with holidays. I always want to make sure everyone is happy and that the food is perfect, and in that:

-I don’t want to lose sight of time with everyone I love, which is precious.
-I want to give thanks to God.
-I want to reflect on the histories of why we celebrate and remember.

The holidays are holidays for a reason. It’s more than food and presents. Let us remember those reasons.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Let the holidays unfold themselves, with the love of those around you. Some planning may be required.

From a Name to a Regular

I met a man this morning who remembered my name.

After the gym, I went to get a quick breakfast before work from a new place Downtown. The place was actually old, but it was new to me.

I called ahead to pick up my order to go, and I gave the man my name over the phone. When I got there, he was occupied helping other customers, but he soon got to me and said, “Your order is coming right up, Austin.”

1) I have no idea how who knew who I was. 2) He remembered my name.

We talked for about 5 minutes while I was waiting for my food. He asked me where I worked, what I did and how long I had been in OKC. I asked him the same questions and asked why he loved his job.

He told me that he enjoyed getting to “meet the regulars.”

After that, my food was ready, so I paid and headed toward the door. As I opened it, he called out out, “See you later, Austin.”

And then it made sense why he has so many regulars.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Knowing someone’s name is the first step in any meaningful relationship, business or not. Now I have to go back so I can get this man’s name.

Something About Fires

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about they way they’re built up,
and there’s something special about the way relationships are built around them.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about the way they melt away the cold,
and the way they melt away fear.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about the way they stoke warm,
and the way they stoke conversation.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about the way the coals light up,
and the way they make our dreams light up.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about the way they make whiskey go down smoother,
and the way they make truth easier to swallow.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something special about the way they turn what was solid to ash,
and the way they too turn our bodies to ash.

There’s something special about fires.
There’s something about how they burn,
and the way that we burn with them.

There’s something special about fires.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Sit by a fire and watch relationships burn strong.

Walking in on Intimacy

I stopped off for gas this morning before work. It was around 6:45a, and the sun hadn’t come up yet in Oklahoma City. As I pulled up to the pump, I noticed two elderly women holding one another at the pump next to me. They were weeping.

As I got out of my car to fill up my tank, I began to overhear glimpses of what the two women were emotional about. They were old friends, who hadn’t seen one another in years, and one of them was dying.

When I punched in the zip code from my credit card, I heard the healthy friend telling her sick friend to call her any time and how good it was to see her after all the years that I had passed.

The title of this blog may have led you to believe it would be about something else. But intimacy is all around us, and it knows no boundaries. Intimacy is a word that we often associate only with sex, but it’s so much more than that. Intimacy is closeness, emotion, openness and vulnerability, and it’s found in the little moments of relationships all around us.

Parents and their children.
Couples.
Long lost friends.

Intimacy is precious. It is a gift, and something we should not take for granted to notice. Even when walking in on it unexpectedly.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Find intimacy in the world around you, and life will be more beautiful.

Getting to Know Others (at 5a)

Yesterday, I went to a two-year anniversary party of the gym that I go to. There were about 20 people there, and I know most of them, at least casually. I know their names, where they work and a bit of their personalities, but I didn’t really know what any of them looked like outside of gym clothes. Everyone cleans up pretty well.

I typically go to the gym at 5a. I’m a morning person, and I would assume most of the other people there are morning people, too; however, even if you’re a morning person, you’re not necessarily a social morning person. Or i’m certainly not.

It’s hard to go out of one’s way at 5a to ask how they are, who they are and what they’re up to. It’s much easier to nod a hello in silence and move on with the workout.

But it’s also just hard to go out of one’s way at any time of the day to ask someone how they are, who they are and what they’re up to. And then to actually listen to them, hear them and learn about them.

We leave in a world that wears headphones and stares at screens instead of listening and looking into each others eyes. And if i’m fair, we’re still usually connecting through headphones and screens on socially media platforms, but we’re still missing something. We’re still missing the human element.

The gym I go to is Intentional Fitness. The entire concept is built on intentionality, with each rep, each breath, each workout, and I would expect, each hello. I need to be better at that, and I need to be better at actually knowing my 5a family and letting them know me.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: It’s never too early to say hello.

Loving Others

Loving others is an action, and beyond that, it is an action that sometimes requires strategy. Loving others strategically can take several forms. It can also look both good and not so good.

Loving others looks good when strategic relationships are formed.
Loving others looks good when we ask intentional questions.
Loving others looks good when we listen intently to someone’s answers.

Loving others looks bad when we use others as means to an end.
Loving others looks bad when we have an agenda behind our actions.
Loving others looks bad when we only love for selfish gain.

Loving others well and building relationships takes thought, time and effort. Just as in marriage or any real friendship, we cannot love simply based on our feelings, and beyond that, actions will only take us so far. It’s our questions, our listening, our patience and our understanding of one another’s differences that will take our relationships with others beyond action and into walking with them through life, side by side.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: I don’t know if all of this is accurate, but it feels like there may be some truth to it. Love takes strategy.

Like Boiling Water

Have you ever watched water boil? It’s faster than watching grass grow, and it’s at least a little bit more exciting.

Most people boil water with the lid on the pan they’re using because it’s faster. I typically like to boil water with the lid off because I like to watch the process happen… and also because I have the tendency to let the water boil over from time to time.

When I watch water boil with the lid off, I feel like I’m watching a reflection of how my emotions work.

The stove lights up and begins to heat the pot. The pan heats up and begins to heat the water. Slowly, but surely, bubbles begin to appear as the temperature of the water begins to rise. They come up from the bottom and pop at the surface until a rolling boil begins to occur.

It’s a slow process. It’s a somewhat boring process. It’s a process that can still make a mess.

As the boiling water roils, it splashes more and more the hotter it gets. It splashes more the fuller the pot is and creates an even bigger mess if you’re not paying attention to it.

And that’s how i have noticed my emotions tend to work. They start slow, and if someone is paying attention, they might notice some bubbles of how I’m feeling show up. But if I burn for too long on something, it gets messy.

That happened to me this morning on a call with my mom. Something had been simmering boiling for far too long, and it got messy. I overflowed, and things I had been keeping inside for far too long came to the surface.

Better late than never, but there has got to be a healthier way to do this. Maybe monitoring a boiling a pot with a lid on it is the way to do it. We’ll soon find out.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Boil water with a lid. The process is faster and less messy when under control.

Emotional Healing Vs. Physical Healing

Earlier this week, I was prepping dinner and slicing up onions to add to a dish. About halfway through the onion, I sliced the very tip part of my thumb off with the knife I was using.

It felt terrible.
Blood went everywhere.
The onion was ruined.

It’s been nearly 4 days since the cut happened, and it has just now healed enough to where it doesn’t bleed whenever I bump the wound.

Time heals.
As does the human body.

I was talking about this healing process with a friend at lunch yesterday. We were talking about how incredible it is that the body can do what it can do, regrowing skin, mending itself. Targeted right toward the wound.

As we were talking, I couldn’t help but wonder about emotional wounds and emotional healing. Does it work the same? Can our minds and our souls callous and regrow as we become wounded by life? And even if they can, is that healthy?

Part of me thinks no. And a larger part of me thinks emotional healing us much slower than physical healing. As skin regrows in a matter of days, emotional scars last years, if not lifetimes. And as skin regrows, scars and reveals damage, so do emotions.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Mental health healing can be harder than physical health healing.

Small Talk

It’s ironic that something that’s supposed to make moments feel less awkward makes me feel more awkward. That something is small talk.

The weather.
Empty, “How are you?” questions with,
“I’m good,” answers.

These are the ebbs and flows of conversation that is somewhat meaningless. Conversation that allows us to slip past intentionality into apathetic thought. We make eye contact, nod along and show our respect in the physical, while our minds run elsewhere and our phones vibrate in our pocket.

Many factor keep us from real talk. Fear, time and trust are among them. But maybe the biggest culprit is habit. Small talk is what we do. We do it with our family, our friends and everyone we encounter in our daily routines. We rarely let anyone in and rarely does anyone return the favor. We are caught up in casualness.

It pains me to know I am unintentional, even with those closest to me. That I’d rather not think to give a valuable answer that reveals my true self or that I’d rather not ask a meaningful question to know someone better. Today’s goal is to change that narrative. One conversation at a time.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Don’t settle for small talk; Use it as a road to real talk.

The Cosmos of Relationships

Relationships are hard to predict.

Some you are born into without a choice. You can’t choose your parents, just as they often can’t choose you.

And no one is really in charge of all the other loves, friendships and acquaintances that make life dynamic. But it seems like those unexpected relationships are where family and unity happen. They can be unnatural and awkward, but they can also turn into the most natural and restful.

It would seem relationships are a small glimpse into the cosmos we all live in. They are a proof that beauty and order can come out of messiness and chaos.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Look to the Cosmos as you look to your Friends.

Breaking Free From Phones

As I sit here with my fingers on the keyboard, my eyes are not looking at the screen. Not because I’m a great typer, but because they are glued to another screen. They are glued to my cellphone.

Cellphones are mesmerizing. They light up, buzz and make sounds, and their presence alone always leaves you waiting in anticipation for when it will go into action next. And while cellphones are fascinating, I sort of hate them for it.

I hate that mine always steals my attention away from other, more important things. My cellphone steals my vision away from work, from conversations and from people. It doesn’t even have to be lit up to do so; it can simply sit next to me on the table or in my pocket, and I’m distracted by its presence, the weight of it weighing me down, mentally more than physically.

I want to focus, but i’m distracted. I want to ignore the dopamine hits, but they continue to produce. I want to be unconnected, but the world requires connection.

Can we break free?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Today and the next, I will leave my phone behind, not for the day in its entirety, but long enough to break away from the control this device has over me.

Potential

I have a haircut scheduled for today at noon. I’m going to a new barber at an old shop because my old barber stopped working there.

My old barber had some personal issues come up that somewhat wrecked his life. He lost a marriage, the rights to see his kids every day and two jobs all in a matter of four weeks, and because of that, he has fallen off the grid. As anyone would be after all of that, he’s in a dark spot. He isn’t communicating with anyone, he’s making rash decisions, and he isn’t at all himself.

I made a decision to stop going my old barber because in all of that turmoil, he became unreliable, and I got frustrated.

In his pain, I was impatient. He couldn’t meet me when I wanted, time after time, so I went somewhere else, and I sit here wondering if that has been the wrong decision. Did I stop giving him a chance to redeem himself? Did I stop seeing all of the good work he had done for me for more than two years? Did I stop seeing his potential to overcome adversity?

People have potential. Even in our darkest times, we rise, work and have the opportunity to turn to light and goodness. And I hope my old barber digs deep and finds that potential, and that I have grace to see that in him and the world around me too.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: God sees more in people than people see in people - humanity’s potential.

Good Different

There’s something extremely refreshing about being in the company of individuals who are different than you. Each time, it’s like a crash-course in, “Things I Missed in ______.”

Last night, I met up with a friend at a local pub to share a few pints, and we talked about literally everything: drinks, movies, work, jobs, girls, racial inequality, social justice, religion, sports, EVERYTHING. And with each topic, it felt like I was getting so much background that I had never had before because this person saw things I could never see, experience things I could never experience and know things I could never know. And that, my friend, is refreshing.

It’s peace to know that your thoughts and beliefs aren’t the only thoughts and beliefs because we all know, all of our thoughts and beliefs, no matter how strong they are, have holes in them. It’s peace to know that seeking to understand, rather than to be understood, is a position of love that we can all pursue. And it’s peace to know that the backgrounds that define who we are today will continue to teach us tomorrow, as we create new backgrounds through learning from those who are not like ourselves.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Seek the goodness in not always being right and hearing the stories of those who prove you wrong.

Why Seemingly Unimportant Questions Are Important

Going to a new school for the first time is a hard thing to do. No matter if it’s college, high school, middle school or elementary school, any time you start your first day in a new place full of new peers, it’s a big deal and takes at least a small amount of courage.

When I was in the fourth grade, I went to a new school for the first time after having gone to another elementary school in the same town for Kindergarten through third grade. At my new school, my teachers saw it fitting that I was qualified enough to be in an ‘enrichment’ class, and on the first day of that class, I sat in a group with two other students- a guy named Bryce and a girl named Laura. I remember it like it was (almost) yesterday.

Both of them seemed like really cool kids, and they both seemed like they’d been at the school for a long time, so in my mind, it made total sense to try to be friends with them. I gave it my best go, and here’s how it went:

Me to Bryce: “Hey, so do you like sandwiches?”

Bryce to me: “. . .Leave me alone.”

We’ve been the best of friends ever since.

Sixteen years ago around this same time of year, I brought a peanut butter & honey sandwich to a new elementary school where I knew relatively no one, and that historic sandwich got me a lifetime friend. I knew what I had in my lunchbox, and I knew that most other kids probably had sandwiches in their lunchbox too. If I could forge some sort of commonality based on that guess with at least one other person, it could be the ‘Start of Something New’, as High School Musical puts it. (Note: Bryce did not have a sandwich in his lunchbox that day, but that’s okay; it still worked out.)

To paint a simple picture of what happened, I asked a random kid if he liked sandwiches because I knew I liked sandwiches. It was that foundation that started a conversation (kind of?), which, in turn, started a friendship. Bryce became one of my best friends, and weird questions, outlandish conversations and inside jokes no one else can understand became a staple throughout that friendship- all because of one seemingly unimportant question.

I was talking with another friend the other day about what it was like to meet people and connect with someone for the first time, and she made an interesting point: “It’s the seemingly unimportant questions that mean the most- how else are we supposed to forge connections with people?”

It was a side comment in another, broad conversation, but it was that comment and question that I’ve been thinking about most of the week because

1. it’s so true
   and 
2. that’s how I’ve met a majority of my best friends

When we ask seemingly surface-level questions, it gives us the opportunity to ask deeper questions in the future, not as a means to an end, but because you always have to break the surface to get to the depths. All questions are important in their own way, and how people respond to those questions, surface-level or not, speaks to who they are (i.e. do they answer genuinely, sarcastically, etc.). What questions do you ask?

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Always ask if they like sandwiches- you’ll make a friend if you do.

"Make Yourself at Home"

You know that awkward moment when you go visit a friend or family member's house to stay for a night or two, and they leave you with the phrase, "Make yourself at home," which leaves you with the awkward thought of, "Do they really want me to do that?"

There aren't a lot of places on this earth that I would feel comfortable sitting in my underwear, sprawled out on a couch dropping Oreo cookies into a glass of milk and eating them with a spoon while I watch Netflix. After all, I'm a 24-year-old male trying to live a professional lifestyle.

There is one place to do feel comfortable doing that though, and that place is home.

There's something about crossing the barrier of those four walls surrounding all my belongings and life that release the tension of caring what the world around you thinks about you. As soon as I come home and open the door, I can immediately start to relax. I don't worry about how I look, what I'm wearing, and if we're being honest, how I smell. Home is a place where comfort goes to new levels and safety feels almost guaranteed, and really, there's only one place you can feel that and that's at your own home.

There's a big difference between a friend telling me to make myself and home and me really feeling at home. Sure, a lot of it has to do with not being able to freely walk around half naked in someone else's house, but it also has a lot to do with feeling comfortable and secure, not just in the house, but in yourself. A home is a place where you feel completely okay being yourself- no masks, fronts or pretending to be someone else to impress someone. Walking into your home is like taking your shoes off after a long day of being on your feet; it's freedom.

Really, we all have a desire and a need for 'home.' We all want a place we feel protected, at peace and, more than anything, accepted and loved. The hard thing is knowing that not everyone has that kind of 'home' and knowing that even when people do, sometimes they try to make their home more about the things inside it rather than the things it represent. Not everyone has a place they can come to and feel safe and accepted, and not everyone can feel safe and accepted when they do have a place they call home; however, what can we do about it?

We can accept, protect and love others. 

Home isn't just a physical place; it's a feeling and a sense being truly loved for who we really are. It isn't a stationary structure; it's a gift we can carry with us wherever we go and share with others around us.

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: Inviting others into your home is inviting them into acceptance. 

When Wedding Bells Sound Like Hell's Bells

There's this 'special' thing that tends to happen when you enter your mid to late twenties: ALL your friends start to get married.

Not only do all your friends start to get married in your mid to late twenties, but they also seem to all start to get married at the same time. First, it's just one friend is engaged, and you have a wedding in July, and then, the next thing you know, all your friends are engaged and you have a wedding every other weekend from April until September. Wedding bells are nice, but sometimes when they ring too much, they can begin to sound like Hell's Bells.

If there were a world record for number of weddings attended in one day, I think I could've at least tied it this past weekend. Within a span of 10 hours, I attended three (count em') THREE weddings in three different cities. I don't know what it was about the day of April 16 this year, but apparently, if you didn't get married on that day, you didn't do your wedding right. 

Each wedding I went to was great, and each one was beautiful and creative in its own sense. I saw three great friends and family members tie the knot, and I couldn't be happier for the newly-wed couples I call my friends and what their relationships symbolize. I know it may sound like from above that I may be a wedding snob full of jealously that friends are getting married, but I'm not. I'm just battling for the first time another reality of adulthood that most all young adults battle at some point and that's the battle of watching other friends take another step forward toward adulthood that you haven't taken yet.

It's a weird battle and it's a weird feeling to watch friends that are the same age as you (or younger) get older and mature in ways that you can't yet know. I was never really one to believe that weddings were all that emotional for people other than the bride, groom and their families, but now I believe they are, and not just for the reasons you may first think. Yes, weddings are happy, joyful celebrations of two lives coming together as one, but they're also life events that mark significant change and progression in ones' lives. They show two individuals who are no longer clinging to their parents, but that are instead clinging to each other. The slideshows rolling by on the screens show the couples as they once were from days before they knew one another with photos of old friends and memories while those friends from those old memories stand and watch as their friends take the next step forward out of those old memories. 

It can be sobering, it can be nostalgic, and in some ways, it can even be painful. 

Weddings are amazing and beautiful experiences where memories are made and new journeys start for young couples, but when you're in your mid-twenties and everyone you know seems to be starting out on those new journeys except you, take heart. You're not alone, and there is plenty of time ahead for your own journey with that special someone to start. If you're young and wedding bells are starting to sound more like Hell's Bells, listen more closely. Listen to the joy of your friends and their families as they celebrate, listen to the laughter as you reflect on old stories you get to share with friends you haven't seen in five years and listen to the music as you dance your feet of at the wedding reception. Weddings are celebrations for couples, not funerals for singles. Listen close, and you'll begin to hear it. 

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: Weddings are celebrations for couples, not funerals for singles.  

Hot Tub Time Machines

This past week, I joined a local gym for the first time since I've moved to Tulsa. It's a great little gym connected to a hospital with all of your basic gym needs such as weights, cardio equipment, etc., but the best thing about this gym is that it has a hot tub!

Hot tubs are like the perfect combination of a bathtub and a swimming pool; it's hot like a bath tub (minus soap), but big (and public) like a swimming pool. Hot tubs are also great because you get to experience awkwardness at its finest. I mean, what's better than sharing a bubbling pool of luke warm water with half naked strangers who may or may not be the same gender as you and may or may not be twice your age. It's great not only because it's awkward, but also because you never know what kind of good conversations you're going to over hear. 

Today, during my hot tub session, I walked in on two older gentlemen, each over the age of 70, having a discussion about their loss of vision over the years. One was a doctor from Philly and the other was a Tulsa kid, born and raised and a big fan of the Temple University basketball team. Now, you may be thinking, "Why is he peppering in all of this information for backstory? What's the point?"

Here's the answer, I don't really have a point other than the fact that there is just something so cool to me about listening to older generations discuss life with one another. Have you ever just sat around and listened to older people talk? It's so enlightening. These two guys never got around to asking me how my vision was, if I'd been to Philly or how I thought Temple would fair in the NCAA tournament this year, but that didn't matter. I was more than happy just listening and they were more than happy just sharing. It was like my own hot tub time machine. I don't want to call this eavesdropping; I want to call it learning. It's not like I really learned any super valuable life lesson from their talk, but I did learn some of their story, and that in itself is cool and worth it. 

Hearing and knowing a piece of someone's story is a special thing. After all, a person's story is something we all have, yet something none of us have in common. Stories from older generations are even better because they're old stories to new ears with new applications. If you haven't before, sit down and listen to some old stories, even if it takes eavesdropping in a hot tub. 

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: You don't need a time machine or a hot tub to travel through time.