Paying Attention

I knew a guy in high school.  Well, I knew lots of guys in high school.  But I knew a particular guy in high school who was good friends with my good friends.  We traveled in the same circles but were never ourselves anything more than acquaintances.  I liked him.  He was funny.  After he graduated, he moved on with his life and I mine, and while I’ve heard about him in passing over the years, we haven’t kept up beyond friending each other on Facebook.

You know how Facebook has a way of giving you insights to people that you wouldn’t otherwise have?  Well, that happened here.  I got a sense of this guy’s political views that I otherwise wouldn’t have had.  Some of them line up with my own views, some of them don’t, and as I try really hard not to use Facebook as a forum for intense political discussion (it’s just Facebook, kids, not the UN), I’ve never engaged with him over his postings.

But I did read them.

Politics gets a bad rap these days.  I understand why, and I’m not here to debate or discuss it.  I’ll mention in passing, because I literally can’t stop myself, that ugly campaigning has a historic, inelegant tradition in American politics.  Thomas Jefferson accused John Adams of being a hermaphrodite in the 1800 Presidential election.  Being mean and making wild accusations is not a new phenomenon.  But back to the point, I don’t always like other people’s political opinions.  I may reject their conclusions.  But I do try to learn their opinions, and I consider myself better educated for it.

Such was the case with this guy.  He found things which spoke to him, he put them out into the world, he persisted because he believed, and he did so without knowledge of my notice.  I read a lot of what he posted, I digested it, I chose to agree or disagree, and I never let him know that I was taking in what he threw out there.

The funny thing about releasing your passions into the world is that you never know who’s paying attention.  I’ve had reservations about starting and continuing this blog.  I don’t know that I want my private musings to be permanently etched in the forever forum of the Internet.  I started this to keep connected with friends and family, with whom I’m happy to voice my thoughts, but there’s nothing stopping anyone else from dipping into my mind for a quick peek.  I’ve chosen to make this site public and am knowingly inviting the attention, but it’s an experiment – one I’m aware exposes me, one that I think (for now) expands my comfort zone.  The experiment may succeed or fail but I believe in the end that whatever happens I’ll have been glad that I at least tried it.

I won’t claim that I was close to shutting this blog down.  I’ve made a commitment and have had no reason to back away from that commitment, regardless of my reservations.  But I will say that my commitment was reinforced yesterday, when I reached out to this former acquaintance to invite him into my world.

It turns out that while my personal views of the world are skewed left of his, I work in an environment which aligns perfectly with his worldview.  It’s astonishing, really, when you consider the odds.  I took a job on a whim several years back, which led to a career I’d previously decided explicitly against, which led to monumental shifts in my lifestyle, which led to an broadening of my horizons – all of which landed me here, and now, and with these people.  And ‘these people,’ whose ideals are not my own (but with whom I have an excellent relationship and enjoy working immensely), just so happen to hold the same ideals as this guy I haven’t seen in 20 years – who has also landed here, and now.  The chances of that happening seem pretty astronomical.

So I acted.  I have an event coming up soon and I reached out to invite his wife and him to be my guests at this event.  I was thinking that connecting two like entities would benefit them both.  He replied to accept, we started talking, and you know what?  We chatted for hours, casually, while we both worked.  He’s as funny as I remember, and he’s as interesting as I remember.  The opinions he’s published publicly are indeed a perfect match with my current campaign.  I was also surprised to learn that we have much more in common politically than I’d been able to glean by scanning his Facebook posts.  We’ll meet at the event next week, and I’m really looking forward to connecting with him in person.

The twofold lesson for me here is firstly that you never know who’s paying attention.  Had he not publicized his passions, and had I not read them, this connection could never have happened.  He didn’t know I was in a position to connect him to things he holds dear, but he did declare what’s important to him.  As I told him, “I can’t help you change the world, but I know people who can.”  When we don’t tell anyone what matters to us, then nothing really matters. No one can act on information they don’t have.  I hope for him that this meeting takes him somewhere he wants to go, and gives him a broader outlet.  If it does, I’ll be pleased to have had a small part in that – even if our politics aren’t closely aligned.

Secondly, be the person who pays attention.  I’d like to think that a Progressive connecting Conservatives with each other, and not a false declaration of intersexism, is the true legacy of our Republic.  That, I’m sure, will become a whole separate blog post. But I often am not the person who pays attention (for evidence of this, see: anyone I’ve ever known), and yesterday I learned what happens when I am.  All signs point toward satisfying results.

That leads me round to the continuation of the blog.  I don’t know the rules, I’m not super comfortable with the platform, and I don’t know that I really have anything significant to say.  I do know that I’ll continue, for now, and that I’ll do my best to learn some lessons along the way.  It’s worked so far and one week in, I have no regrets.  And who knows?  Maybe someone is paying attention.