In search of the good

Years ago, my brother and I started playing this game while traveling (separately) mostly in airports called People You Meet While Traveling. Mostly it was a way to cope with the (usually) annoying humans we encountered in security lines or at the gate or while boarding. We would message/text/tweet each other about the person, to whom we gave an unflattering name like: “Those who think they’re too good for TSA PreCheck like standing in lines makes you a better person.” (That one’s my brother’s candidate.) Or this one I’m not proud of: The Assholes. “Oh I’m sorry. Did the four of you and your suitcases want to ride the elevator with the two of us and our bags? Too bad. We’re going to mean mug you while the door closes and not even acknowledge that you’re standing there.”

I’ll be honest: it was a mean game because we thought we were funny and were laughing amongst ourselves at someone else’s expense.

We picked up this game again this summer in Florida. It started while my brother was flying to meet us there and continued in person on one of our family vacation adventures. It was bringing us down in a way I didn’t notice, and that’s when my brother suggested that we change our game. Instead of looking for the people who were annoying and had the potential to ruin our experiences, he said maybe we should look for the people we would want to be traveling with.

Let’s be honest: there are WAY more candidates for the first category than the latter.

But I won’t say this often: My brother was right.

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I cannot explain how easy it is for me to see what’s wrong. With a situation, about an experience, in a person, in a written correspondence. It’s like my brain automatically shifts to look for the mistake or the failing, and I’m not even trying to be negative (at least not all the time). I think, at the heart of it, I want to make things right and good. Pointing out the negative is believing there’s potential for improvement. (If only I were this good at pointing it out in myself!)

But it’s a total drag on my mood and emotions. Finding what’s wrong is the easiest thing ever. Looking for good is hard work.

When my brother suggested we change our game, I felt a little bit of shame at the way I’d latched on to the previous idea, how eager I was to make fun of all the people who I thought were behaving badly. I took his words to heart and the next day I made a list of the people we’d encountered up to that point in Florida.

Ok @therealmrfrye here’s the new list. People you’re glad to have met on vacation:

— Lisa Bartelt (@lmbartelt) June 21, 2018

The list included a retired Boeing engineer who was telling stories of his work at NASA to visitors of the Kennedy Space Center, an uber-friendly waitress at a restaurant we picked on a whim in St. Augustine, and our bus driver at NASA who stopped to point out crocodiles and other wildlife and seemed to truly enjoy his job.

You know what surprised me about this list? How good I felt making it. Each of these people brought a smile to my face and even now, months later, I can picture every single one of them. Do you know how many people on the other list I remember? I’m going to have to go with “zero.”

I tried this experiment again while traveling with the kids and it was hard. I’d much rather make a snarky comment about the guy sitting in the exit row taking every last minute available to him on a phone call while the flight attendant is trying to talk to him about his ability to perform the role of helper in an emergency situation.

It’s harder to remember the two ladies who quietly gave up their seats so a mother and son could sit together.

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Maybe there’s some psychological or physiological reason it’s easier to remember and notice the negative stuff than the positive stuff. (It’s easier to frown than smile, right?)

But the negativity is killing me (and it might be killing you, too), maybe not literally but something withers in my soul when I spend too much time on what’s wrong with people.

I do want to be clear that I’m not talking about drawing attention to actual injustice. Focusing on the wrong in situations of any kind of discrimination is absolutely necessary. In a way, calling attention to the wrong is setting things right.

I’m talking more about the minor grievances I have with people who don’t behave like I think they should. I’m talking about the little annoyances I have at the grocery store or the gas station or while driving. These are not injustices, at least not usually. These things are easy to spot, maybe because there are so many of them happening or they just have a way of drawing attention. I don’t know.

All I really know is that it takes effort to look for the good–in people, in circumstances, in the world around us. Watch the news and it’s mostly bad, but occasionally there’s a story of people helping other people or doing something they didn’t have to do. Those things make the news because they are unusual and extraordinary in our day, which makes me sad.

And determined.

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I want to seek out the good in the world around me and when I can’t find enough of it, to be the good in the world around me.

This applies to my faith experience as well. I believe with all that I am that Jesus is the Good News embodied and that our mission as His people is to embody Good News as well. We can write it and speak it, and we must live it out. If we’re ever going to change the world, or even just ourselves, it’s going to have to start with Good News.

News like we’re loved, period, and that hope is not a futile feeling. News that not everyone or everything is horrible. We have to tell the stories of the good we’ve seen. We have to elevate the beauty, not in place of the disaster but in the midst of them.

At an outdoor concert this summer, a folk group that has become a new favorite of our family, sang a song called “American Flowers.” Take a listen/watch.

It’s a ballad that pushes back the darkness a bit. The chorus goes like this:

I have seen American flowers all across this land
From the banks of the Shenandoah, along the Rio Grande
Do not fear the winter blowing in the hearts of men
I have seen American flowers they will bloom again

This is the kind of Good News we need. Hope and beauty and truth. It is not ignorant of the bad (winter) but hopeful that the season will change and testifies to the spring that is on the way. (Think also of Narnia and Aslan on the move.)

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When did we stop telling stories of the good we’d seen? When did we shift our focus to the complaints? Maybe it’s always been that way.

It won’t be easy to look for the good but it’s restorative work that starts with the soul of the one who is paying attention.

Are you paying attention? Am I?