The sun sets on another day…
The sky was dark but I was happy. I saw a brief glimpse of sun earlier, and I snapped a picture of it just for fun. The world is beautiful even if it doesn’t seem like it.
I think in a lot of ways we can break things down into people that show the tendencies of two things, rocks and sponges.
Now both of these are a little off because sometimes each can be a good thing or a bad thing but rocks let everything roll off of them and are relatively impervious to everything that comes at them. Sponges, on the other hand, have a tendency of absorbing everything around them until they can hold no more. At that point somebody squeezes the life out of them and they’re empty again and ready for more. I think I would rather be this fun but be an ever-growing sponge that never needed anything squeezed out of it.
Yeah, I know I’m weird, and I know that you’re probably sitting there asking where in the heck is he going with this, I will tell you.
In a world filled with people who don’t listen to each other we would be a world of rocks. A world of rocks would not care or absorb anything about anything going on around them and instead would sit and just get dry. I see a lot of these people, so sure of their opinion that nothing else matters.
There’s also a world of sponges. In a world of sponges, everyone shares and if two sponges get together they can take from each other and become a bigger spunge or just get more from each other. In a sponge world you accept the fact that you may not be right and never try to belittle someone or overpower them with your ideas.
This may all seem odd since I just sent the card game to press called Overwhelm where the main goal is to destroy your opponent but it makes sense. Would you rather live in a world where somebody listens to you or would you rather live in a world where you are an outcast because you don’t agree?
100 years from now people will look back at everything that has happened in the last 20 years and historians will wonder what was going on. In 100 years someone will try to determine the great divide between us all. In 100 years someone will come to a conclusion that nobody wanted to listen to anyone else. This in itself is a source of consternation.
I don’t care if you’re left, right, or centrist. I don’t care if you’re a million of the shades in between. What I care about is that you take a moment and realize that if you only have 29,000 sunsets is it really useful for you to alienate groups of people because you don’t agree, they don’t agree, or something else? You can be the first step in listening and understanding. If there are only 29,000 sunsets, do you really want waste your time trying to prove you’re right about something that won’t matter tomorrow?
If you threw a “yeah but” in after that last line, think about how you want to spend your sunsets.
So as the sun sets on another day, be a sponge. Be that person that listens. Find a way to see other perspectives and even if you disagree, understand. Even if the perspective is so foreign to you that you cannot accept it at all, try to find the pathway so that you can feel good about it and even if you walk away disagree never burn the bridge that is nearly impossible to rebuild. You are a step in the right direction you can just listen. You can be more. Be more everyday, no matter what.
Sleep sweet, love life, and thanks for being you…