Digging for Gold
I felt like I was back in 4th grade again. Jesse and I decided to bunk our beds so we would have more space for people to hang out in our room my senior year of college. Since it was his idea, Jesse volunteered to have the top bunk so I didn't have to exert energy in jumping up to the upper echelons every night. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I originally thought it would be, except for the couple times Jesse fell off of his bed in the middle of the night and nearly gave me a heart attack, but that's a different story for another blog.
I have wonderful memories of talking up to the ceiling late at night, voicing my frustrations, venting about girls, and veering towards questions revolving around The Meaning of Life as the voice from above would speak down in response (Jesse not God, but sometimes God as Jesse). One night Jesse and I both were realizing something we did not want to realize about ourselves: We were negative people and it was affecting our relationships.
Everyday I would try to look for an excuse to write someone off. I did this as a mechanism to protect myself: If I could notice the shortcomings of others, I felt better about my own. That night, talking through something we did not want to talk through, we decided to made a promise to each other.
This promise changed the trajectory of my senior year. "Let's search for the Gold in EVERYBODY".
It was hard at first but I began to find for the remarkablilty in everybody instead of the insecurity. All of the sudden, I started to get more invitations to events and more importantly, I didn't feel so gosh dang negative all the time. It was a paradigm shift: I noticed the bad, but I committed myself to focusing on the good.
