April 15, 2017
Day 3
Just outside Lubbock, Tx
Currently reading: Travels with Charley, By John Steinbeck
Currently listening to: This American Life podcast.
Softness.
This day was like being wrapped in a warm comforter on a cold winter day. Everything about it was comfortable and soft and, like being wrapped in a warm comforter on a cold winter day, I never wanted it to end.
I started out in a cheap, seedy motel on the highway in Lubbock, Tx. They were charging me $66 a night to stay there and I thought to myself, “I can do better.”
So Boss and I split and drove around the city for a while. It was quaint, it was country… It was Lubbock. I find it heartening to know that some don’t really change too much, despite the passing of time. Lubbock is still pretty much the same place I left about a decade ago. Still lacking in modernism and still full of west Texas charm.
But I have been to cities before, it was time to press into the unknown.
About 10 miles outside of Lubbock, Tx is the Buffalo Springs Lake reservoir. I had never heard of it while I was a student here, but I sure wish I had. Yes, it had the normal tourist trash that accompany any organized travel destination, but we were savvy enough to find an empty spot, up on the mesa away from the gen-pop garbage packed into their RVs, chugging miller lites and thinking questionable things about their cousins.
The sun was warm and there was a breeze that kept the mosquitos away. Boss and I sat outside for hours, basking in the sun, listening to the boats and jet-skis muscle by on the reservoir below. It was nearly perfect.
At dusk, we went for a walk. We toured for a few miles across the reservoir and into the dense vegetation below. We were walking back and I saw two tiny little flowers growing up alongside the highway. They were beautiful and perfect; simple and soft like the day was today. I stopped to take a photograph as a few cars filled with fisherman rushed past.
But the breeze was too much and I couldn’t get a good shot of the flowers. They just kept on fluttering in the wind. I tried to hold onto the stem, but even though the bottom half of the flower was stationary, the flowers still swayed in the wind, making it impossible to take a clear picture.
People are so very similar to these tiny little flowers that sit on the side of the road. We, as humans, are constantly growing on the highway of life as countless people pass us by on their own journey. We all try and grow as brightly as we can, no matter our situation. And we are beautiful. And we are perfect.
The challenge comes when someone else enters into the picture. Here we are, growing the best we can, and someone comes in with their own agenda and tries to get us to fit into their reality. They see the beauty of ourselves and are drawn toward us. But, no matter how they try, we are just flowers on the side of the road, blowing in the wind. Nothing they can do will ever change who we are or how we experience life. And they will never be able to get a picture.
So the metaphor is this: Be happy to be a flower on the side of the road as countless people pass you by on their own journey. Be soft and perfect, because that is what you do best. One day, someone might come by and see you for your beauty and instead of trying to force a picture of you, they will just sit down next to you and make sure you have enough water to drink and don’t get too much sun. These people, the ones who just sit next to you and help you grow, these are the people worth keeping.