A couple of days ago, I was walking on the greenway here in Cleveland. It's a pretty popular thing here in the spring. It's relaxing. It lets us college students take a break from losing our minds and enjoy nature. I was trying to be a typical college student. Enjoy nature. Enjoy Netflix. It's what we do.
Anyways, I was walking on the greenway and I walked past this cool sign. It was a sign that had columns of the phrase "Before I die I want to. . ." and then there was a blank for people to write what they wanted to do before they died. I thought it was a neat idea. Let me include one of the funnier responses. "Before I die I want to marry 5 SOS." If you don't know what 5 SOS is, it is a band. Obviously, this person can not marry all five of them, but keep your goals high! I respect that. I wanted to marry the Jonas Brothers back in the day. It could still happen. Most of the rest of the responses were not really PG material, much less G material, so they didn't make the cut to be in this post. . . (Sorry, bro.)
One response really caught my eye, though. The response was "Before I die I want to feel loved." Normal people would have thought, "Man. That's sad." Me, on the other hand, I can't let stuff go. I dwell on it. It consumes my mind and the thought that there is someone in the city I live in that doesn't feel loved bothers the mess out of me. I guess we fail to realize how privileged we are to be loved, but do we also fail to realize we come in contact with people every day who feel empty? I do. I let my anxiety ridden, introvert self take over 75% of the time and don't show kindness the way I should. I show awkward, weird, and mute. I mean at least I'm not being hateful, right? Wrong. I'm being a bystander to suffering. I feel like that is worse. Honestly, It's something I have to work on. I have to pretend I'm not an introvert and say hey to people on campus, because someone might need a friendly good morning or how are you.
Isn't that something we all need to work on? Do we get so caught up in our own selfs that we forget to have the little conversations with people that could possibly make their day? Everyone puts on a front. Most people are not going to just walk up and tell you what's going on in their life. To the people that can do that, I wish I was as genuine as you. So, think about it. How many people do you walk past every day that just want to feel loved? How far will lunch with a stranger on campus go? How many people do we have to lose before we realize Christianity isn't about trying not to sin, but it's about sharing the love of Christ that covers our sin?
My goal for this week is to start saying hello and genuinely caring for the people around me and I urge you to do the same. Hey. You might knock "I want to feel loved" off of someones bucket list.
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