Sands through an hourglass

As I often say, life happens to me faster than I record it. I don’t really have the instantaneous social media presence like most people. I don’t do things and immediately share it with the world. It’s a different kind of documentation of one’s existence but one that doesn’t seem to suit me very well. Ben Hecht said something about this long before social media existed:

“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” -Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964)

Obviously I’m connecting the old daily newspaper with social media today. Interestingly, the pace of the current media is lightyears faster and thus accentuates Hecht’s point. I know people are trying to make sense of all this by extracting data over time and thereby determining patterns and meaning. It’s depicted in all kinds of graphics and gets interpreted in various ways. To be honest, I don’t think we have a handle where the world is going and it sometimes feels like the car has lost its breaks. I think the same can be said of certain peoples’ lives. 

I tend to try to reel in some of this, at least in so far as it is something I can control, whether it is in my job, my family or in my own head. I gravitate towards budgeting time for reflection. Periodically taking stock. Not getting to caught up in the moment. Giving time for wisdom to get involved in steering the car. People seem to increasingly steer their lives like a child sitting in a car pretending to drive. The jerky motions left and right would never make for a successful driving experience. It would produce the same nausea I get from tracking news. Information is coming out so fast, the quality of journalism suffers and there’s a tendency to overdramatize any one thing. 

I’ve spoken to some people that have decided to look at their favorite news websites no more than once a week or more to mitigate this phenomenon. I’ve done that myself on occasion (though I’m often too curious to wait that long) and it does sometimes feel like you’ve missed an eternity. But when you step back you realize that in reality you didn’t really miss all that much. 

In any case, don’t expect me to spew facts about my life moment by moment. I probably have a much more interesting life than a lot people who do but it’s a level of narcissism I prefer to avoid. And it wouldn’t provide a better picture of how, or even what, I’m doing. In most cases it would just be stuff – noise that someone else is trying to filter through in their respective feeds. I'd rather not.

"It’s tricky to write about a life. No one has the complete picture—not even the person whose life it is." -Elisabeth Elliot
   

The Holidays - Part 2

The Idaho leg of the trip is usually full and not very restful. It’s okay if you know that going into it – if you know that you are not using your vacation time to relax and recharge your batteries. And even if you did relax more, the travel back to Nairobi, particularly with kids, would undo most of that recharging. It’s just the nature of the beast.

I’m now in Mogadishu. The hot, dusty breeze is blowing in the window. The thoughts of our time in the snow seem to be ages ago. One thing I can say about my life, it’s full of diversity on many levels.

We only had a little over a week for the visit so we had to plan carefully and move frequently. Day one began with a trip to storage to pull out winter gear, then dinner at my sister’s and then we were off to southern Idaho to see my parents.  I also spent time rummaging through tools that that I could borrow for next spring inn finishing the work on our house up north.

skiing!

My dad has been in hospital care for a few weeks due to a broken pelvis. We were able to stop in and see him a couple of times. His spirits were surprisingly good and the physical therapist seemed impressed with his progress towards walking again. It’s going to be a long road, however, understanding that such things take a long time to heal at this age. And the therapist was kind enough to let the girls take over their therapy room given that no one else was in there at the time. Nonetheless, it’s a sobering place to visit. It’s a reminder of the unkindness of aging.

snow skulpture

After a couple days there we headed north to the small town of New Meadows to check in on our new unfinished house. In planning with my sister who had the key, we were to meet at the house directly. Unbeknownst to me, two of my sisters (who have houses in the area), my brothers—in-law and my brother were all waiting inside with champagne to welcome us. Pretty funny, I have to say. We had no idea. They’d even brought a space heater to add to the “housewarming”. So we toasted the new house. I showed them around a bit, explaining the plans, and then we carried on with the initial plan which was to measure and do some much needed thinking about what needs to be done.

steaks and family

Afterwards we headed back to my sister’s log house where we would spend the next two nights. We fit in some skiing, built a snowwoman, had some wonderful steak, enjoyed a nice “campfire”, etc. I love the snow so it was one of my favorite parts of the vacation. But we needed to head south and carry on with the trip.

nice

We headed to Boise for three nights. We had our family holiday party, did some shopping and mostly just enjoyed time with family. Always sad to leave but we were also starting to get anxious to return home and get back to some routine. Travel is all well and good for a while but it seems that most of us do enjoy getting back to our “normal” lives – even back to work.

happy land owner

Travel home went smoothly and we arrived with all our bags. Happy to slip back into our own beds and know that we could stay put for a while – or at least my family could. I would be flying to Somalia the coming Sunday morning. Alas, it’s what I do.

house warming