Count Your Blessings #21 – Meeting Interesting People

I find that I am schizophrenia in many different aspects of my life. There are things which I know I enjoy, but I don’t do them. I enjoy a trip to the gym; but struggle to get myself motivated. I enjoy turning the television off and reading a book; but don’t do it very often. I really enjoy meeting new people; but I worry about it and avoid doing it. I think that this particular worry is really a fear of what people will think about me. It’s an irrational fear that has been there for for a very long time. I’m actually writing this in a room full of people, but I wouldn’t dream of talking to any of them so I’ve got my headphones on looking industrious.

Even though I worry about it, meeting interesting people – which for me, is most people – is a blessing.

There are billions of people on this planet, and they all look different. But looking different is only the surface of the differences. These people all think differently. They all eat differently. They all have a different heritage. Each of these and the numerous other differences aren’t small incremental nuances they are deep and they are profound.

On a person-to-person level I have rarely come across someone who didn’t interest me in some way.

One year Sue, Jonathan, Emily and I went to Florida on holiday, and to visit my brother’s family. On the way back we were sat in the airport opposite another British family. This family fascinated me. There was Mum, Dad and two teenage children. These people had been on holiday, the same as us, but they had obviously had a completely different experience to us. We were chilled; they were anything but chilled. The teenage son didn’t even need to say a word for his mother to chew his ears off; “don’t you start”. Once the mother had said her piece the father would have a go and then the father and the mother would have a go at each other. What needs to happen for family communications to get that bad. It’s a mystery, to me anyway.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realised that things that I found dull and boring actually enlivened others. My job is predominantly project based, start, execute, complete, get out. I have a work colleague whose job it is to keep things running once I have been in and done my stuff. He didn’t choose this job because he wasn’t good enough at the project stuff, he chose it because he is good at it. It’s the thing that gets him going in a morning. If you asked me to do that job I would be bored in less than a week, he does it with a passion. I have known him for a long time and I still can’t get my head around it, it’s a mystery to me. It’s the mystery that is the thing that makes him so interesting.

This summer I sat and listened to a man who had been lead by God to do some amazing things. He wasn’t a particularly good presenter, but his passion and his heart shone through. That passion and that heart reached across a tent of thousands and entered my chest and struck right into my heart. It’s a mystery how someone’s heart and spirit shines through. He could probably have talked about his cat and I would still have communicated his heart.

At our church we meet regularly in small groups where we discuss different aspects of our faith and it’s impact on our lives. Sometimes one of the quieter members of the group will spark into life and go for it. There heart for the particular topic will spill over the top of their shyness and they will reveal a fascinating insight into their relationship with Jesus. A relationship which is personal to them. The thing that is a mystery to me is the thing that lights the fuse. It is often something that you wouldn’t associate with the individual at all. That regular interaction with that small group of individuals enlightens my own existence and experience in a way that only the interaction of people with people can do.