July 24, 2024
People are different.
I doubt this statement surprises you at all. Parents, siblings, friends, children, all the people we’ve known in our lives: they’ve all been different. Personalities, tastes, the curve of an eyebrow or the crinkle at the eyes when they smile all testify to the variety of humanity.
I’m thinking of someone I knew once who was always open to reconsidering a decision.
We worked on a project together, and by and large we worked together pretty well. It required a lot of our time and a lot of our effort, and it required so many little decisions along the way.
Some people really enjoy the experience that comes before a decision. They like to review the possibilities, “taste” the variety of outcomes. Others find that an uncomfortable place to be. They like to come to a decision, make it, and move on – while those in the first group fret about missed opportunities.
Personally, I’m so much in the middle that I joke that I don’t care whether I’ve made a decision or not. My partner, however, was firmly among that first group of people. As much as I like to look at options, I also prefer to stick with a decision once made (unless it’s clearly not working out). At one point in our project, of course, my partner reopened the conversation about a choice we’d already made. “But we decided that,” I said. “All decisions are tentative,” he replied.
The ”moral” of this story is not that I was right, and he was wrong. Nor was he right and I wrong. We each worked according to our customs and comfort. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes it rubbed one or the other the wrong way.
And we still managed to work together and produced something pretty amazing. People can do that, even when they’re very different.
In peace,
Pastor Eric
