I've Got It All Backwards

Living in the city and working in the country is disorienting. It's all backwards. You're supposed to live in the country and work in the city, right? Driving to work in the dredge of slow traffic as you all join in the depressed comradery expressed by that barely-perceptible head nod. The type with the distinct difference between the nod that starts low and goes high, and the one that starts high and goes low. The former seems to say, "Hey. Welcome to the group. Nice to see you," but the high to low simply suggests "This sucks."

It's all high to low.

But I'm sailing past all of this comradery at 75mph in the opposite direction. It's no less depressing, though, and there's nobody with which to share the depression through that high to low nod of the head. I just get to be equally depressed at a higher rate of speed.

So woe is me; Stuck at a job in the country doing everything I can to make each local fully aware that not only do I not want to be spending nine hours a day in this town, but also that I have more refined tastes from living in the bigger, faster city.

Then I went to Stacy's.

Not that it was my choice, but in this job you go to lunch where everybody else goes, or you spend an hour alone. Today it was decided to patronize the gem of the cheap run-down establishments, Stacy's Buffet.

The building itself looks like a mixture of modular houses all parked in just the right position to provide shelter for a common feeding trough capable of providing enough grease for all of Southeast Ohio. The sign out front is nothing more than a banner with the restaurant's namesake tied to the original sign of whatever unlucky establishment last found itself unable to pay the bills. There's a covered porch stretching across the entire length of the building just like you'd see at Cracker Barrel, only this one isn't for decoration. It just is. In fact, nothing at Stacy's is for decoration. It's just stuff sitting where stuff ended up when somebody who last moved it decided to stop moving the it. There it sits. The tables and chairs are a collection of the area's not-so finest tables and chairs, yet if you look close enough long enough, you can find two that match.

The line to get into the buffet isn't long, but it does exist; solely at the oblivity of the long-since retired lady working the cash register.
One product.
One price.
$5.99 plus tax.
$6.41.
...All day long.

Nothing here moved fast, and this lady was no exception. I had exactly one hour to pay, eat, get back to my car, drive back to work, and slide in behind my desk. Time was of the essence.

The food was exactly as I expected. Delicious. I'm no connoisseur of food, and this place was right in line with my taste. Nothing special, just good home cooking. Yet as good as the food was, it didn't suprise me. What did suprise me were the people.

They were every where. Large groups of teenagers, older couples, white, black, Asian, all sharing tables. Here is where the town of Wilmington, Ohio eats. The entire town.

There was constant conversation loud enough to mask the clinking of plates and translucent plastic glasses, but quiet enough to engage in your own conversation. The place had a pulse, like the cafeteria in high school where friends took the only time they had to all be together to catch up on the days activities, and to refuel both physically and socially before seperating again for an afternoon of hard work. Everything was slower here, as if Stacy herself had discovered the secret of slowing down time to enjoy as much as you could, rather than my prison of working as hard as you could within the constraints of the clock.

There is nothing you can do. When you walk underneath the porch that just is, and stand in the line in front of the long-since retired lady repeating $6.41, $6.41, you've stepped out of time. It doesn't stop, it just doesn't matter.

Community thrived here, and it felt authentic to be a part of it. What mattered wasn't me, it wasn't my job, nor was it the other people. What mattered here were the relationships. Nobody was alone. This was a community at its foundation.

As I turned away from the buffet with my heaping plate of food, I got my first of the many head nods I would receive in that hour.

They all went low to high. Welcome.

As I stepped back into time, and worked my way back to my desk, I saw my to-do list filled with deadlines and work-driven priorities. And I realized...

I've Got It All Backwards.

I Love New York

New York.
It really is unlike any other city in the U.S. I've gotten to know the city much better over the past few years. Its a real city where people come to live and work and be around other people. Don't get me wrong; I don't want to live here, but its nice to be a part of the cultural capital of our Country, even if just for a little while.

I'd seen New York several times before, but in February 2002 I had the opportunity to spend some time feeling the city. I'd just been hired to start the career I'd dreamed of since I was six, and I wanted to make my pilgrimage to New York before I made the jarring change between college and the "real world." My grandfather had just died, and taking a trip with my family to the city he loved to visit seemed to put a symbolic end to the old, and a prelude to my new life and career to come. Over the next few months, I visited New York several times to perfect the plans I had to bring my fiance` and propose to her there. Only a month later, I could barely make out the blurry image of "the lady" through my tears as my future wife and I sailed by her with me on one knee.

On countless beautiful winter mornings, I would fly down the East River on my approach to Laguardia Airport, and on countless winter evenings I would sit in my New York hotel room thanking God for the ability to safely bring the plane to a stop in what New Yorkers always seemed to call "the worst winter storm of the year." I've spent time in parts of the city I never expected to step foot in, and not only learned the ways of the culture there, but learned to to live and fit in with the culture.

New York has, in a weird way, become the benchmark for my life. It seems that during every major change in my life over the past five years, I found myself in New York. The city itself is irrelevant, of course, but my connection with it and the bone-jarring changes in my life has made it a place of spiritual clarity where I can most easily separate myself from my life and look at if from a distance. Now, as much as ever, I feel the change. The uncertainty of a career change, and leaving the house where my wife and I started our lives together is intimidating. More than anything, I'm afraid I'm going to regret my decision. I know its all relative, and I try to deal in absolutes as much as possible, but nothing scares me more than knowing I made a decision that made our lives worse.

But then I come to New York. I feel the gravity of every other important event that's happened in my life; I feel the uncertainty I had while sitting in the same city; and I feel God talking through my experience. It really is like being able to separate myself from time, and look across all of it at once: the past, and the future, and everything is OK. And while sitting on that spiritual plateau, I feel God lean over and whisper, "See?"

And I do see.

I see Him sitting right next to me. I see my life as uncompleted, but free of regret as long as I keep myself sitting right next to Him on that plateau. I see joy, and I see pain, but I see all of that while sitting next to Him.

And so my decision has been made. I may explain it in other posts, but it is quite obvious that this change was brought about by God. It is also quite obvious that it will not necessarily be a good change, but I'm excited to do what God has asked me to do, even if it means hardship.

New York is a dirty city. It has horrible traffic, is ridiculously expensive, has some of the rudest people, and is not the safest place to be.
New York is where I visit God.

I Love New York.

To Our Fathers

I feel old. Not like my hips are about to give "old", but like what I would have called an "old person" when I was a kid, "old". In some ways I hope this is a mid-life crisis because I'd be a wreck when it really did happen, but in other ways I'd much rather live to be older than 54 (27 * 2 for those without a calculator). I already know whats causing it, and as much as I've planned the important things in my life, I didn't see this one coming until it hit me. You see, I'm rapidly approaching the age my father was when I was born. That would be meaningless if I was nothing like my dad, but I am exactly like my dad, from my interests to my weaknesses to my sense of humor. The issue isn't that I'm like my dad, thats actually a good thing, its that I've seen what somebody thats exactly like me does from this age on. Its almost as though I've already seen the rest of my life through my dad's eyes, and the rest of his through my grandfather's eye's. Its not so much a question of what will happen during my life, its more a question of who I will be in my life. For the last few years that has scared the hell out of me, but the closer it gets, the more I feel ready for it.

Like most people my age, PawPaw (my grandfather) was in World War II. It was a time when an entire generation of young men left for war. War. Not summer camp. Not prison. War. PawPaw was drafted and sent to the front lines in France and Germany after D-Day. He didn't talk much about how he felt, only what happened. He'd talk about laying in a foxhole and watching his best friend die next to him after being hit by a mortar (while in the same foxhole). He'd talk about funny moments like how he'd trade rations for local Schnapps, or serious moments; this guy or that guy who "bought the farm" for various reasons. He always seemed to deliver just the facts, and wouldn't talk about what it meant to him, but I took notice that when he talked about his fallen friends, he never seemed to mention "them." It was always "we."

It was only a few years ago that PawPaw developed a brain aneurism that changed his personality and ability to function throughout the last year of his life. Sure, it was sad, but more or less, I chalked it up to a part of life. It was my father and how he dealt with it that affected me so deeply. To my dad, taking care of PawPaw was almost an obsession. It was what he had to do, regardless of how difficult it was. Knowing how my father cared for me when I was younger, and understanding how alike my dad and grandfather were, all I could see when I would watch my dad take care of PawPaw was myself caring for my dad in the future, and I knew I would.

At PawPaw's funeral I wasn't uneffected, but it really wasn't that difficult. We had the wake, we carried the casket, and even said some words at the funeral. They left $1.04 in his pocket (3 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies) because he always wanted to make sure he had any combination of coins he could possibly need, and as sentimental as that was, it didn't get to me. I was completely fine.

Right before the funeral ended the seven WWII vets from the VFW fired the 21 gun salute. Like a slow-motion replay, it was then that I first understood why PawPaw always said "we." PawPaw had put his life into the hands of his friends and his friends had put their lives into PawPaw's hands, but he fealt it was he who hadn't lived up to the promise. He'd been living his life for those who didn't have the chance to, and the honor and dignity of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I looked over at my dad and saw the same honor and dignity in how he cared for PawPaw and I knew who I was going to become. And I cried. Hard.

I've seen who I'm going to become, and I'm so ready to keep the family's unspoken tradition of honor and dignity. These great men have made me who I am.
So every now and then, I'll pour some Schnapps, raise my glass...

To our fathers

I am

So here I sit, in my late twenties without even realizing it. Kinda blows, really. I turned 21 over six years ago, yet that is where my mind (and maturity) got stuck. Remember back in college when our indecision was always suffixed with "well he's just defining who he is"? Majors would change, girls would change, choice drinks would change. Yet here I am, six years later, still klinging to the mindset that I've yet to define myself. But without even realizing it, I have defined myself, or more specifically, I have been defined. My career has begun, I'll never change girls again, and I'm kinda partial to my Coors Lite. Without even knowing it, I have become who I am, and who I will be.

There are so many labels I can give myself, or have been given to me that describe who I've become, but it is the label of "christian" that makes me think critically. Am I a christian? Its not as simple an answer as some might think. First of all, what is a christian, or more specifically, what does it mean to be a christian to different people? I am a believer, and fulfill all the requirements to meet the definition of a christian, but definitions and perceptions are two different things. Even though I may technically be a christian, I struggle with the perception of being given that label. Its more a question of what does the word "christian" mean. Is it how its defined, or is it how people perceive it?

I am a christian by definition, but not by perception. I'm what christians would call a christian, but I'm not what "normal people" would call a christian. I believe, but I don't think anything less of you if you don't. I live Christ, but I don't use him as an aggressive projectile in order to increase my tally of "saved people." Nobody likes the idea of being conquered. It is so easy to confuse arrogance with evangelism, and it almost always starts with a feeling of superiority, the polar opposite to the humility taught as one of the most fundamental christian attributes.

Collateral Peace. That is how I live. I don't target others, I target myself to live as He wants me to, and let those around me get hit with collateral peace. Its not laziness, its faith. I spread God's word, but I let him decide when.

Who am I?

I am a son.
I am a grandson.
I am a brother.
I am a man.

I am a friend.
I am blessed.
I am a husband.
I am in love.

I am impatient.
I am insufficient.
I am flawed.
I am so sorry.

I am a fisher of men.
I am the fish.
I am what You want me to be.
I am ready.

I am.

The Beginning

It must have been three times a day I'd hear about somebody's blog, and it was exactly the same number (three) that I couldn't talk about my own. Why? Because I was too lazy to get off my arse and make one. There's a lot of things I choose not to do for good reason (like bathe), but creating a blog is not on that list. To be honest, I don't know if its on the list or not, since making the list is one of those things I choose not to do, but should I ever make that list, I won't put blogging on it. Whatever. I'm going to start a blog.

But what to write about? Certainly not the importance of grammar and the irradication of fragment sentences (you're bound to read more than your fair share on this blog. My deepest and most sincere applogies to Mrs. Flaugher, my high school english teacher). Why don't I use this blog as a type of personal journal, full of my daily events and most intimate thoughts and opinions? Turns out these blog things are kind of public; besides, I'm much more comfortable telling you want I want you to think I think rather than my actual thoughts. There's too many people out there waiting to use your own words against you to ever supply them with the truth. You know what they say, "Loose lips sink ships"... but then again so do mines that just sit there and do nothing. So much for cliche's.

Most likely I'll end up writing about whatever comes to mind at the time, provided I take the time to keep this up. But this isn't a rambling. I will always strive to maintain a constant with this blog that I ask all readers to keep me accountible to. That constant: the title. PerspectiveIntegrity is just a squished-together version of two of the most important words in the english language. I tried IntegralPerspective, but even though the word "integral" is a variation of the word "integrity," it just doesn't mean the same thing. Sure, it may technically mean the same, but lets face it, the meaning of a word is only as good as the perspective of the person reading it. Next I tried IntegrityPerspective, but that just sounded stupid, especially when simply flipping the words provided a much better, and ultimately the chosen alternative, "PerspectiveIntegrity."

During a recent leadership seminar, integrity was defined as "saying, doing, and intending the same thing." That definitely is a part of being a person of integrity, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to put a period on the end of that definition. It goes a long way to defining what "honesty" is, and even though honesty is an integral part of integrity (*rimshot*) , receiving the compliment of being a person of integrity is just not the same thing as being told you're honest. Integrity goes so much further than honesty, and involves what is "right." In fact I would define integrity as "saying, doing, and intending the right thing."

If integrity is saying, doing, and intending the right thing, then perspective would be understanding when you are saying, doing, and intending the right thing. Integrity is a personal way of being, and yet perspective involves community. Without perspective you may never know what the right thing is, because you haven't taken enough into account. Consider a leader who builds an impenetrable wall to protect his citizens. His words, actions, and intentions were all in line with what he thought was right, but he failed to maintain the perspective of his citizens, who were all farmers. Now they're all safe... and seperated from their livelyhood. Oops.

So there you have it. The Beginning. This blog will be about whatever, whenever, with only one thing remaining constant: the author will always strive to understand what is right, and to say, do, and intend the right thing. If you ever catch me losing perspective, or find yourself questioning my integrity...eat me.

Until then...

The Beginning.