I’m not doing well with following that old warning. Talking way too often with strangers these days. Almost anyone I pass by. Doesn’t matter where I am. Nothing really important to communicate. Very casual. Just some sort of need to connect.

Is this something that happens to us as we age?

No one at home. I think I run errands and half the reason is for human contact. I talk with everyone all along the way. Even out in the parking lot. I remember having a whole conversation with a lady at the Pearland HEB about her watermelon as she was coming out and I was going in. Must have just read something about how to pick out the ripe ones. I tend to use the same corny lines with the check-out people. I need better writers. Sounding like a very tired vaudeville hack. They are always nice to me, but I can tell I stopped being funny several years ago.

For me and my situation, there are fewer and fewer people at work to talk with. I have classes of students.  A handful are interested in real conversations. When I was in college, I can’t imagine what I would have said to a professor. Mostly, I’m walking back and forth to class each day trying to smile and say something to students I pass by. I don’t know any of them (hardly). Just something light and harmless. More difficult because two-thirds have got technology in their ears. Easy to ignore the silly old guy with the hat.

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that? Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”  ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The lady at the dry cleaners who’s still wearing a mask is always ready for small talk. Especially when it’s not someone complaining. I still find it hard to interact with the mask. Can’t read the expressions. That’s why young people today are more clumsy with social interactions. They grew up using phones, not real faces. Didn’t learn how to interpret body language and create their own social selves in the process.

I use an old fashioned “mom and pop” pharmacy. They hire kids to work the counter and now, after so many years (including cancer), I know all the pharmacists. I visit only a few times a month, but there’s always something to connect about when I do. In high school, my best friends from church and I worked at a drug store. That was at least 100 years ago.  But, as I look back, it was invaluable life experience. Learning by practice, how to to talk with the much older adults who worked there.

“The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative.” ― Khalil Gibran

If I end up going out to eat – I want to insert some conversation that humanizes the experience with all those serving. Even those bussing the table. As a social scientist, I know that often there are people working all around us that we never even see. Can you imagine how that must feel, being in a service occupation, but no one really knows you’re there – until the bathroom runs out of TP. While in college, I worked as a waiter. The more entertaining I could be, the better the tips were. The hardest workers were the dishwashers. No one ever really saw them either.

Don’t forget to be kind to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!  – Hebrews 13:2

When I am with friends or co-workers, I talk waaaay too much. It’s like I was just released from solitary confinement or something. Sometimes I can see people glancing at the door to my office, trying to plan their escape. I can’t seem to stop. I look in the mirror and tell myself, “keep your mouth shut this time.” So far, isn’t working. I need to get a little statue of St. John the Silent (454-558 AD) and put in front of me as a reminder. This saint lived alone for 76 years! I thought I had it bad. He probably didn’t even have a good internet connection.

Casual connections with strangers is healthy for me personally and for society in general. I guess I’m doing my part. Those teenagers running the concession stand at the football games seem terrified each time I ask “how’s business?” I think they are just prepared for “small, medium or large” answers. I’d like to do my part to engage a disengaging world. What can I do today to keep myself from curling up under a bridge as my life keeps coming apart? No matter how high the waves or loud the thunder, keep swimming for the shore.

“A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet” ― Will Rogers

 

 

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” ― Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD)

My faith teaches me that the way to really experience life is to live as a dead man walking. When that happens as a habit, all kinds of disappointments and angst don’t drive me so nuts as I’ve been lately. Here’s what I notice happens (and doesn’t):

• Less lonely, looking outward, not inward (I put names of others on my mirrors)
• MY feelings don’t get bent out of shape
• Not thinking about getting, it’s about giving
• How to be a channel of blessing, not a stock tank, saving up
• Stop talking about beliefs, start doing ’em
• When dead, that means the whole resume has to go (get it?)

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.” – C. S. Lewis

I’m living in a culture that surrounds me with a selfish ethic. A marketplace of need is necessary to drive an economy of more and more. So much time shopping for the au courant fashions, downloading the most popular music, visiting the new cool restaurant. Trying to convince me that what I want is what I need.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I’m thinking about me waaaay too much. Certain to me too unhappy. What about… Trying to figure out how to solve the problem of that student who’s joined the class weeks late because of some sort of financial problem, who’s stuck sitting on the back row, squinting to see the screen, taking notes on an itty-bitty notepad, failing the open-note quiz…what can I do to fix some of THAT? Doing more of THAT is how I live a better life. Without even thinking about it.

“Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn’t easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens – I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself.” ― Elisabeth Elliot

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell

Over the years, I’ve taken those personality tests that organizations provide for their members. The goal is to help people work more effectively and in coordinated teams. As my work environments and situations have changed, I like to retake these tests. We all grow and evolve with the dynamics of the work world where we spend most of our time.  One of my strengths that stays consistent is a talent for accumulating information – in many forms. One for me is books. Over the past thirty years I have put together two libraries – one at home and one at my office. Both for different purposes.

I’ve recently been pushed into a new chapter of life. In the context of a series of tremendous changes in my life during the past five years. When is this roller coaster ride going to end? Right now, the big changes I face are leaving work and selling my house. These have been my homes for thirty years.

So much help from a veterans organization! They contact me and a truck comes and picks up boxes of donations. Each week if I request it. A big part of that weekly donation has been boxes of books. My libraries are quickly disappearing.

I’ve had “book fairs” in the parking lot, giving away books to students. People who stop by my office often leave with a box of books that fit their journey. I locate books that are meant to be passed on to someone special. Colleagues have “shopped” their way through my office shelves. Students in grad school always need some additions to their emerging libraries. Some friends share the same taste in fiction. It’s a joy to pass on a whole series by a much loved author.

I feel happy and satisfied when I’ve found a new home for some of my books among friends and students. Accomplishing the larger goal of lessening the burden of possessions that must be carried off to the little “van down by the river” also brings me great relief. Bit by bit I’m getting closer to where I’m going. Wherever that might be.

But the whole activity is bittersweet.

All of my thirty years of collecting is disappearing, book after book, one box at a time. I jumped up twice this weekend to find books I know I had, but they were no longer here. I couldn’t find the answers or the memory I once had. We age and lose our thoughts. Mine are also passing out the door in cardboard boxes.

“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow” – Juliet

I still have many more to give away. What do you like to read? No one in my family will touch a book. They’re trapped in digital screens. I have much you could learn from – get a degree or two even. What about some history or mystery? I think I’ve passed on most of my religion, theology and devotionals. There’s a big bookcase here in my bedroom filled with volumes I have yet to read. These I’m saving for the road ahead. Maybe there will be a tree next to that “van down by the river” where I can sit and work my way through each one.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”  ― Charles W. Eliot

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” ― Edith Sitwell

We’ve just had several “snow days” down here in the deep South. Very unusual. We are more used to Hurricane warning days, high water alerts or (this year) a derecho wind storm wreaking havoc in downtown Houston.

If you have children in the house, a snow day means some unexpected adventures. I saw pictures of friends and family who had their kids out sledding and putting up miniature snowmen. An unexpected day of adventure. Maybe something we all need now and again. Wouldn’t it feel great to throw off the cares of life for a quick sled down a snow covered hill (on a boogie board)?

I awoke to sounds of my house creaking in the bitter cold during the middle of the night. Please pipes, don’t burst! Thanksgiving as me and most of my potted plants survived. Like the guy on that TV commercial likes to say, our houses down here are just not made for really cold weather. The Texas power grid seems to have stayed up and running. Snow on the ground, covering up everything and made the whole street seem like a scene from a dream. No one even noticed all the HOA violations.

And just like that, within days, the weather is back to normal here on the Texas coast. Freezes happen just once a year, to kill off your plants and make you have to dig around for that big coat buried somewhere.

An unexpected lock down always means new time to allocate to something else – no heading off to work, school or other travels.

• Even more TV
• Get some work from home projects done
• Spend time with the kids
• Write a blog
• It’s too cold to clean up the garage
• Hopefully Christmas has already been put up??

Seems like something extraordinary needs to happen in my day after day to get me to stop and smell the roses – or at least notice where they even are. I so often miss what the “snow days” can offer. Caught up in all the busy-ness that actually doesn’t really matter in the long run. When I think about what does matter, I too often miss it because of the cares of life and the tyranny of the urgent.

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ― Albert Camus

I’m going to try and have a “snow day” more often:

• Take more walks – as short as two minutes after meal has health benefits!
• Lose my phone – stop frittering away my attention surplus
• Write stuff down in my Commonplace notebook – then stop worrying
• Send a few thank you notes – there’s always someone who needs to know
• Turn off the TV – maybe some music instead
• Sit down and look through some old photos – reinvest in my memory banks
• Take a drive to nowhere, windows down – no longer being “driven” by the schedule

What are you planning for your next snow day?

“Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out  immediately.” ― Charles M. Sheldon

I’ve always liked that quote. But this year, I wonder about my annual list of life changes. For most Americans, the same resolutions make it to that list year after year. What’s the problem?

2025 Top New Year’s Resolutions

1. Save money
2. Eat healthier
3. Exercise more
4. Lose weight
5. Spend more time with family/friends

*Survey by Statistia

We wrestle with the same set of life goals year after year. Saving more money, losing weight, living a more healthy lifestyle. These are all modern goals, one can’t imagine your pioneer ancestors worrying about weight loss as they scratched out a living on the prairie.

These goals don’t change year after year because, for many reasons, we just can’t make these big changes. It makes people feel good to set big goals, but then we live most of the year in defeat, struggling to fight those battles with our finances, health and time management.

I wonder if my problem isn’t about trying to change into someone else, but about removing obstacles to being my real self. Maybe instead of working out to change into someone else, I should instead focus on who I really am and what’s getting in the way.

Who am I really?

1. I need honest FEEDBACK from trusted people in my life
2. Resolutions should be focused on SMALL STEPS forward – not giant makeovers that never really happen
3. My own self-assessment needs to be ACCURATE – use a journal to reflect
4. Too often I settle for QUICK FIXES or DISTRACTIONS instead of taking a hard step forward

Don’t let grand (and maybe tired) resolutions for next year prevent you from getting things out of the way. Things like subtle behaviors and attitudes that keep the real you from emerging. Involve others to have a more true journey. Resolve to take another step forward in 2025.

Who are you and who has God created you to be? What obstacles are preventing you from living in that reality? What’s distracting you all the days of your life?

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” ― Thomas Merton

Yes, I realize we are supposed to get all our thanks taken care of in November. I made a list the other day. Sort of like that other guy who lives up north. Mine was filled with so much that I take for granted. So much that I want to acknowledge and offer a constant thanksgiving.

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” ― Kahill Gibran

 

• Friends from faraway who take the time to give me a call (remember phone calls?).
• Medical care now available in every other shopping center up and down the main street.
• Tamales from my dear neighbor every Christmas. I’m from San Antonio, that’s what we have this time of year. Helps me remember my childhood Christmas Eve’s with grandparents.

• Hard to find items delivered right to my door (the next day even!).
• Trying out a new restaurant with a friend – I’d never have gone if you hadn’t asked.
• Friends every year who go to football games with me and who make those late night drives home pass so quick.
• Grandchildren are always happy to see me – it doesn’t really get any better than that!
• A warm bed to sleep in on the handful of cold nights in Houston.
• Someone else who cuts my grass all year.
• All those wonderful people at my church, week after week, holding everything in life together with their everyday acts of faith.
• Hats that fit my big head. How did I get so many?
• A handful of sticky friends – right here with me no matter the weather report.
• Shishito peppers at the local grocery store just when I needed that taste. My 3-year-old granddaughter now loves them as well.
• The internet/TV that’s back up and working – just in time for the game.
• A Christmas tree that’s now so easy to set up – in less than 45 minutes. Don’t anyone tell my wife.
• Finding gifts for everyone and never having to hunt around for a parking place.
• Finally, after 30 years down here, locating a great barber.
• Hot Wheels cars, Frozen songs, dress up costumes and pirate ships passed down from one generation to the next.
• Another Sunday has passed and there are still people who attend my Sunday School class (I’ve been teaching it for about 25 years).
• Family photo Christmas cards arriving each day this time of year.

“The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.” ― Thornton Wilder

• It’s that time of year when I rehearse all of the holiday rituals and remember all of those people who built so many wonderful memories in my life – at the time I didn’t realize that’s what they were doing and mostly took it all for granted. I’d like to have some of those minutes back, please.
• So many books (I now need to give away) that I’ve collected, read and learned from.
• Friends and I shared favorite holiday movies this morning. I’ve lived in a time with unbelievable technology providing access to so much culture. When I grew up there were just three TV channels.
• Water in bottles. So easy to stay hydrated. I’m certain I never drank any water until I was in my late 20’s. If I did, it was mostly out of a hose in the yard.
• Good hamburgers always make things better.

• Time to play with my grandchildren, and read to them, and now hear them read to me.
• I’m so thankful for memories as I pack them away in boxes these days. So much life filled with joy and delight.
• Living a life with a list like this – that goes on and on…

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” ― Andy Rooney

My grandson is learning to tie his shoes. That’s always one of the major hurdles of childhood as I remember it. I told him that learning to tie my shoes was a big problem for me. As I think back on it, I managed my early years of school okay. Actually, I don’t remember any real obstacles to learning. It’s when I got to college that the big problems arose. Maybe learning to tie my shoes wasn’t such a problem because of me, maybe I didn’t have the best teachers? My grandson has terrific teachers. What a blessing!

Learning lessons like how to tie your shoes is one of the thousands of ways that we all get prepared for the bigger life that awaits us.

When I went off to college, like so many of my own students today, I wasn’t very prepared. Imagine that deer in the headlights image. Of course, I didn’t know how unready I was. When I got there, way back when, my instructors didn’t really know how to help unprepared students to learn. I was on my own in so many ways.

Things have changed a lot since then. As this semester draws to a close, most students were ready to finish , some not, I started thinking about how all of us get prepared life we see coming and so much we never imagine.

How did your Thanksgiving go? That’s always the first test of getting everything sorted, arranged and landed right on time. All to be wolfed down in15 minutes! It’s sort of like a trial run for the big Christmas event(s).  Christmas has the added elements of decorating, gifting and multiple events (not just a single feast). Did you learn anything last year to help you better manage this year?

As I’ve aged, there are now people in my circle who have decided to cut way back on all the preparation, tradition and rituals. It looks to me like what they are doing instead is replacing all that time and energy with people focused experiences. Who cares if the Christmas lights get hung or not? Accepting that invitation to catch up and rekindle a relationship seems more significant.

What can you begin to let go of so that you can hang on more tightly to what really matters?

When the semester ends, there are classic “characters” that enter the stage just like in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. After almost 30 years of semesters, I can recite the lines of this play by heart. Despite all of my warnings, there are always a few who end with a crash and burn. I myself almost did many times when I was their age.

How DID I make it? I don’t remember. My years in college had me focused on so much time consuming activity. Involved in campus ministry organizations, a full time job, president of a service club, then getting engaged – who had time to do any learning?

“‎Though nobody can go back and make a new beginning… Anyone can start over and make a new ending.” ― Chico Xavier

A colleague was on a rant last week, angry about her students who didn’t seem very interested. The same feelings have plagued me. I wondered if it wasn’t a lack of curiosity, but a lack of preparation we were disappointed with? I never said a word in any of my college classes forty years ago. Maybe fearful that I’d be found out – the only one who didn’t belong. 

I’ve been trying to figure out all of my own college mistakes so that I can help my own students avoid some of the same problems. Maybe there are universal human problems that transcend time? Do you think some lessons we have to learn on our own, the hard way?

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.” ― Joe Abercrombie

Maybe the best way that we learn how to be prepared for living a better life is by learning from the good models all around us. Just like learning to tie our shoes.

How can you help someone in the days ahead get prepared? To truly celebrate? To make that next leap forward? To invest in what matters? To turn loose of something? To take a risk?

I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about getting prepared for my mysterious future. Maybe in that effort, I’m missing out on being prepared for what needs to be done TODAY?

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

 

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ― G.K. Chesterton

An 18-year-old was killed in a car crash this morning here in Houston. Police think it was street racing. All I could think about was a family gathering around the table on Thursday with an empty chair.

Will there be an empty chair at your table this year?

As we travel more miles down the road, we all realize how important it is to take the time to say what needs to be said to people in your life – to not let precious time slip away.

What needs to be said to that significant person in your life? Maybe to someone who has made a difference in someone else’s life? It could be a stranger that keeps crossing your path. A quiet person in your world that you can see would benefit from a little appreciation. What thanksgiving need to be said? Why don’t you be the one to do it?

What are you waiting for?

Almost everyone needs to hear a thank-you. These are becoming too rare. These words can be life changing for both parties. The giver and the receiver. Expressing and receiving thanks increases the health and happiness of both parties. It can also change the attitudes of bystanders – people who witness thankfulness. Gratitude has a ripple effect on both friends and strangers in our lives. It works in numerous ways to improve everyone’s life. Being thankful and expressing it out loud is one of the best ways to spread well-being where you are and even to people you’ll never meet.

What are you waiting for?

Sometimes, I think only the big things deserve a thanks. When people do something extraordinary, that’s when they expect and deserve my appreciation. But that’s not really the best way to live. What I want to start doing is looking for all the everyday and ordinary that need to be thanked. What if I don’t see that person again? Maybe tomorrow won’t get here. Just saying thanks here or there might be just what God wants from me.

Who needs a holiday?

What am I waiting for?

“Gratitude is the seed of gladness.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita

 

 

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

― C.S. Lewis

 

I’ve learned that I need to remind myself to smile as I walk about in the world with others. It always works. Not only is it contagious but my own cold heart warms up. I think it’s just what everyone needs, some good mood spread about. One of my students last week asked me (in class) why I didn’t ever smile. I sarcastically told this American history class it was because none of them had ever heard of Dwight David Eisenhower.

It never fails to amaze me when I hear out of a students’ mouth what they remember I’ve done or said in the past. Typically something I’m completely unconscious of doing or saying.

I used to lead orientations for new faculty. One thing I would remind everyone was that our students very rarely remembered the grand lessons they were taught. But they always remembered the person who was leading their class. Always make sure to make meaningful memories as your real self.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

What can I do as I walk across campus each day and pass students heading into their futures? Mostly, I’m looking for ways to communicate somehow with people I don’t know. I’m fine with being that character on campus.

Seriously, as I walk to classes each day I can’t help but notice that there’s not much smiling happening. All these young people with their whole lives of promise ahead of them trudging along with a frown on their face. Way too much unhappiness on display. What can I do? 

I try to smile, ask a general question of each stranger, “Did you make it through Wednesday yet?” or later in the day, “Did you learn enough today?” It’s not that easy to say something. So many are wearing headphones or earbuds. Deliberately disconnected from social interaction for some reason. So, a smile or wave will have to do. Maybe a smile and encouraging word is all it takes to set the tone for a good day or end of the week.

At work, I’m wearing my funny costume so I always get noticed, my private college bow tie and a hat. A smile should also be required. Usually, as I’m walking to class I’m focused on trying to get my courage up – for the show that’s about to happen. Now is the time to notice everyone else.

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”
― Paulo Coelho

My own interactions at work have been dramatically reduced these days. I’m flying a mostly solitary trip through the clouds. What hasn’t changed are all these students sitting in class and passing me by on the sidewalks. Worried about their learning, trying to hold down a job, family stresses, surrounded by strangers, not very prepared for college (like I wasn’t), and working hard to make it through today.

Maybe a smile and and a little encouragement is just the blessing needed for today. No one can stop you from doing that!

“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”  ― Roy T. Bennett