At the beginning of this last semester, as I moved my daughter into her apartment, it struck me that she needed a basic set of tools. I went to K-Mart and collected every tool she might possibly need. A hammer, pliers, etc. - just the basics. I even got her a bag to hold all of these items. When all was said and done, she was ready to go. I did all of this early in the morning before she was even awake. The funny part of the whole experience was when I got to the register to check out. A gentleman probably ten years my senior looked over all of my items and said, "Someone starting school today?" Well of course. It was so obvious from the things I had purchased exactly what challenges were ahead during the upcoming day.
I flashed back to a time much earlier in my life just after Andrew was born. For those of you who've experienced having children, these are times with little sleep and a lot of unexpected things pop up that need to be accomplished. So at eleven o'clock one night, I was standing in a cashier's line with a package of disposable diapers and some formula. We'd run out of these two essentials and there were no replacements in the house. And even worse, there was also no waiting for these items. Of course the part which made this funny was that the other three men in the line had the exact same items, and all of us looked as though we'd had no sleep in the prior seventy-two hours.
As you watch people around you every day, it's amazing how much you can tell about the things they are in the middle of, or just the kind of day they're having. Sometimes it's based upon the place they are, or sometimes it's only based on the way they look. My daughter and I like to play this game at places like the Iowa State Fair. We will pick a place to sit and then we discuss if people are really off the farm, or if they're just dressing that way to come to the fair.
New boots, new blue jeans, John Deere cap that had never seen the sun before? They didn't live on a farm. Either that, or they'd saved their Sunday best for just this occasion.
I was in Winterset this morning and saw the perfect example of just what I am talking about. Really, here in Iowa, boots, jeans, and a black Stetson hat aren't what you would call typical. However, sitting in Winterset this morning I watched a man get out of his pickup truck and walk down the street dressed exactly like that and you could tell he thought nothing about it. This was the way he is suppose to look and there was nothing the least bit strange about it. I'll even bet if the right person is reading this right now, they know who this man is. He's probably a fixture in the community and that attire is common for him. He is programmed to act and look this way.
The greatest thing about being human is that we have the ability to change or fight this programming. On any day, we have the freedom to get up and look at the world and the way we interact with it and make a change. I remember when my son decided he was going to be Andrew rather than Drew. That was a day he changed the way he was programmed and began to change the way others around him were programmed. He changed the way the world viewed him and the way we interacted with him. Honestly, I still have trouble some days with remembering he is Andrew, but I am one of the last holdouts regarding this change of programming.
I know for myself, there are a lot of things I have just always done, many of them without even thinking about it. As we wade through this last month of the year, and in to the New Year, with all of the resolutions which typically come along, I need to take a little time and see if there are things I should do differently. Although everyone thinks about the beginning of the year as the time we come up with resolutions, there is never a bad time to take a good hard look consider things we can change, or upgrade. This type of reflection is going to be something I do over the next few weeks as we work our way through the holidays and the beginning of a new year.
From my shop to yours, I hope you have a great holiday season and a truly blessed New Year.
