What do you see in this picture? Random parachuters jumping out of a plane?
Know what I see?
I see my son.
He is one of those dots in the sky.
Last week he graduated Airborne and got his wings. He is a life. A great big, beautiful, crazy, danger-daring, adventurous life.
And so is every one of those dots in the sky.
Before my son joined the army and started special training, I would have just seen nameless, faceless parachuters.
This has me thinking.
How many times do I see an event, while others see the people they love or respect or admire who happen to be participating in that event.
An even bigger question is how many times I see an issue when I should be seeing people. An issue to be solved or resolved instead of lives that have stories and hurts and needs.
This is important. When we stop seeing lives and only see what those lives do we miss a lot.
We miss the heart that is unique in its beat for its purpose. We miss the passions and talents and skills and gifts and family and friends that are attached to that life. We miss the mind behind the face. Heck! If we are honest, many times we even miss the face. When did we stop looking at each other?
This is important.
Because when we miss those things, we miss the opportunity to interact from our humanness, made in the image of God, to theirs.
Who works in your office, perhaps even on your team, that you have forgotten is more than someone hired for a role to do a job?
Can you imagine the difference we could make in our businesses and overall daily lives if we started noticing more of each other’s incredibly unique humanity? Noticing the “more” that is in all of us?
Is it possible that the desire to work from home has intensified by the fulfillment we get being around people that care about us? That know we are more than what we deliver?
How could our homes, neighborhoods, communities, churches, and businesses increase in the joy people feel about being there?
What if we became intentional about showing others we see them and care. I don’t believe it would be long before we transformed the mundane, mindless places into places of joy. Places where people were genuinely happy to see us, too.
Just some of my thoughts about this world of work and life in 2024.
Would love to hear yours.
Brenda
Brenda Harkins is a believer in impossible possibilities. In brokenness becoming beautiful. In justice and mercy and honor and power – with love perfecting them all. As a Speaker, Author, Mediator, and Professional Coach, Brenda is highly focused on the power of communication. Her confidence, clarity, and courage to transform challenges into victories were the catalyst for creating Loud Is Not A Language®, a communication model that is actually a challenge to transform you. Become more you. Building strong, resilient, respectful relationships at the same time.
Wow Brenda. We were just talking about this and the next thing I did was read your beautiful truthful words. With the AT and T cell outage this morning, I was letting someone know that this was happening. The reaction she gave was of an “OH NO” variety. It was going to impact her and her day and it mattered. The interesting thing is that her job is to tell people that their utilities are going to be shut off for a time. When she speaks of it, it is in a very casual and carefree tone, like it’s no big deal. We react so differently when the issue or the person involved is part of our immediate world or if something affects our comfort or security. God cares about every detail of everyone’s life and if we are supposed to become more Christ-like as we mature as Christians, I believe that would mean we should be modeling that behavior a whole lot better than we do. Everyone matters to God and they should matter to us too. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
Such a great perspective concerning the outage we experienced today. Every life has a story in every situation every day. If we could just remember that! Thanks for your comment Marcia!