One of my favorite and most influential music videos is “Everybody Hurts” by REM. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s set in a traffic jam on an urban highway. One by one, you peer into various cars and see a caption of the occupants’ thoughts, such as “I wonder if anyone cares”, “Does she still love me?”, and “I feel so alone”. The theme is that everybody has stuff going on at any given time, lots of stuff, some good and some painful. So no matter what’s going on, we’re not alone. That idea both comforted me during a difficult time and changed my perspective on people. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in our own little world that we don’t think much about what’s in other people’s worlds. I’ve had tons on my mind lately – busy shifts at work, trying to be a better husband, the garage sale, grants, the surprisingly complex process of babymaking, Bible study, wills, stock purchases, and many other things. But my people also have their own pressures and topics to think about. One couple is starting to raise money to adopt a baby after their final in-vitro attempt failed. One friend feels like all her friends have left her behind because they all have husbands and kids while she’s still single. One friend got fired and is looking for a new job. One couple just bought their first home. One friend has a pituitary mass and is waiting to find out how the docs want to treat it. One friend is still waiting to get a job as a firefighter after months of interviews, waiting, hoping, and enduring a job he hates so that he can continue to put food on the table. One relative interviewed for a job up in Chicago. It all combines to form the beautiful mess of Planet Earth. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Those of you who know me well understand that while I’m a patient man, I’m not always very tolerant when people don’t do things right. Naturally, my own definition of “right” is correct. People do things all the time that get my panties in a bunch: coworkers who spend much of their time away from their desk instead of answering their phones, people who let their cats and dogs run around loose in our neighborhood, smokers, litterers, televangelists, people who choose not to live within their means, people who don’t make their children or pets behave, drivers who speed, people who leave their shopping carts in the parking lot, etc. I would love to be able to “fix” all of these OBVIOUSLY deficient people and make the world a better place. But I’ve finally realized (and partially accepted) that it is neither my right nor responsibility to mold everyone on earth into my own image. In fact, the world is actually much better off NOT being filled with 6 billion Andy Boxes running around. (Ever see Being John Malkovich?) In many cases, my opinion isn’t the only right one. Sometimes it’s actually wrong! In this fresh new year of 2007, one of my goals is to be more tolerant of other people – their opinions, their choices (right or wrong), and their strengths and weaknesses. I want to just roll with it a little better. A wise man named Reinhold Niebuhr (?) once wrote a prayer called the Serenity Prayer that we could all learn something from:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”