Everyone Is Not Your Friend (Leaving the Surface World)

I sometimes use the term “Friend” the way John Wayne used it famously in the opening scenes of the classic western “Big Jake”.  Like most people, the word can mean something very important to those we have known for a very long time, but to others, it is merely a suggestion based upon the charitable benefit of the doubt at the start of an acquaintance before it matures with familiarity.  If you remember the famous scene in the movie, John Wayne and his Dog approach two men in the process of lynching a Scottish “sheep farmer”.  They kick the man’s son away when he desperately tries to intervene.  Wayne, aka Jacob McCandles, observing from a distance reluctantly hails them and addresses the two erstwhile gallows men as “Friend”.  The scene is tense.  The men, though addressed with the convivial term, do not necessarily feel “friendly”.  They are suspicious and bristle at his interference.

Too often, we make the mistake of assuming the people we meet along life’s shared journey are friends.  It’s an assumption only in our desirously civil minds, if not in theirs.  People only enter that true meaning of the term “Friend” when they show themselves to be friendly both in word and in deed.

So in my blog’s inaugural postings, just because I may refer to my readers as “Friends” the term can mean no more than just the surface understanding of who I optimistically hope they are.  I am under no illusions.  There are bad people in this world.  Some who take pleasure in doing others harm whether physically or by impugning their character unjustly.  Some people who, in our modern social media context we’ve designated as…Trolls.  The hecklers, who have nothing better to do with their lives than mock and ridicule others just to pass the time, rather than producing or contributing something positive to the world.  To those, I would say at the start of this journey through my house of ideas, “Don’t take the message on the Welcome Mat at the front door as obligatory or binding.”  To strangers standing there giving some solicitation pitch, it is merely a suggestion for you to keep it brief and don’t wear out what you are standing on.  The interior back side of my front door they may never see.

I’ve often wanted to get a chilling but reciprocal mat, placed just so, on the porch step under the door at the back of my house, bearing a very different message.  In true literary humor, it might read something like the following:  Congratulations!  You’ve made it this far.  Most of the others didn’t.  What that tells me is that you declined the offer to tour the wine cellar just below the house’s foundation.  It’s a shame though.  The Amontillado was a particularly good year.  Good luck surviving the booby traps hidden throughout the backyard just ahead and have a very nice day! 😉

Ah, the look on some people’s faces would be priceless.  Literary aficionados, not dressed in the evening’s garish motley garb with bells on, will get the joke and have a good laugh.  All others can go straight to Poe.  Edgar Allen, that is.

The journey ahead to Excavatia is meant to inspire and uncover some insights that we as fellow travelers can share along the way.  Some people at random may stumble upon this shared journey of friends exchanging ideas and inspiration and attempt to sully that repartee.  Some are just passing through and following their own journey and we may never meet again.  I get it.  In Tyler Perry’s brilliant comic style, he, in the character of Madea, relays a brilliant understanding of people who create problems for other people, and good people who fail to understand that corrosive people should not be chased after.  He says, “Let them go.”  That is important to learn the differences of certain behaviors of people by the evidentiary content of their character.  He uses the illustration of the parts of a tree.  Leaves, branches, and roots.  Learn to recognize those types of people that are transitory and fall with the slightest breeze.  Leaf people.  Seasonal people who are green and tender only when the season is favorable.  Branch people are more stable but when strong winds come or the storms of life twist you, they break and fall away.  Branches can wither, or get so overloaded that they cause the tree trunk to bend towards them.

We often blame ourselves for this, but I am reminded of the time in when the only perfect person to walk the face of the earth, Jesus Christ was also deserted by fair weather friends.

“At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.” [John 6:66 NLT]

It is telling that Jesus referred to Himself as The Vine and his disciples as the branches.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” [John 15:5 NLT]

Later in the biblical account when the worst storm of his 33 years upon the earth came, he was abandoned by the very closest of His inner circle of friends.  The one who vowed never to leave His side and committed himself to fight for Him, denied he even knew Him three times when the crunch time came to stand.  Interestingly that man’s name was called Cephas (little rock) [John 1:42] but was later changed to Peter (or Petra) in [Matthew 16:18 NLT] “Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.”

The point of this being, that those who start with you on your journey may not always be the ones still with you when you face untold challenges along the way or finally reach your destination.  This journey is not one for the faint of heart if the goal is worthwhile.  People will lose faith in you, and some will break faith with you.  You must be willing to embark and commit to this personal journey even if you are harangued by trolls along the way or your friends desert you in your determined pursuit of the dream and hope of finding and succeeding in Excavatia.  Some of those you begin with might even be villains.  So be careful and wary.  Be focused and not dissuaded.

Despite what we might desperately want to believe there are very real dangers around us.  Evil does not need to masquerade in a red satin suit, with a pitch fork and horns.  It is the stain upon the human races soul which marks us for inevitable destruction.  Often evil can present a cherubic face and seemingly wide-eyed innocence in our presence.  A nursery worker might discover that the colicky baby that cries throughout the church service had another nefarious cause that prompted its continual weeping.  To her shock she reviews a nursery video showing that one of the two-year-olds, seeming to playfully romp around the room as if riding an imaginary horse, has discovered to his savage delight what fun he might have with a push pin each time he passes the annoying baby that seems to get more attention from the nursery workers than he does.  After all, he is special.  There is no one in the world better than him.  His mom tells him so, and all these other grown-ups should lavish on him the attention and care that they give too much to that stupid, noisy baby.

Like the purloined letter (E.A. Poe again), evil hides in plain sight of us.  We just have grown so accustomed to its presence that we fail to see it.  We expect it to have the look of something else and so fool ourselves into not recognizing it until it does something so shocking and disturbing that we trick ourselves into believing that there was always something odd about the perpetrator that we in our prescient connectedness to vibes were picking up on before the shocking reveal.  We convince our foolish selves once again that we will know and sense evil if we just pay more heed to our mystical sixth sense.  After all, we are special.  Our mommas told us so.

So be careful not to become a villain yourself.  Dangers there will be.  Setbacks should be expected.  Be true to your calling and be careful not to be too trusting where caution is needed.  Be sober and vigilant, dear friend.  This road is fraught with perils as well as surprises.  If your heart is faint, stay home.  If your heart and commitment are stout and you are up to the challenge, follow on…

 

John Wayne – Big Jake

https://youtu.be/3opoCWqrEPI

Tyler Perry – Madea

Reference:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw0aAInXibA

Sandra Bullock

Reference: https://www.facebook.com/goalcast/videos/1501949219882263/

Stay Away From Negative People

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3LOP9FO2_M

“Honesty and Sharing It All” – Blog Post of Rachael

https://acceptingthepeace.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/honesty-and-sharing-it-all