Good morning…
My parents, at eight-two and eighty-three years old, live in a two-bedroom villa in a continuum-of-care community near my hometown of Berea, Ohio. Our whole extended family planned to celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary in May…then COVID hit…and everything shut down…one full year ago this week. My annual trip from Atlanta, Georgia requires a plane flight, so my usual visit with my parents in the first week of December was also cancelled. The picture above from an earlier holiday visit makes me yearn for my December 2021 trip up north.
“Dear Susie,” began the letter I received from my mother yesterday. “In reading your blog each morning, I know you expand on emails you’ve received from friends. Since I don’t email, I’m sending you an article from Terry Pluto whose column we read most every morning in our newspaper.”
“Maybe you can use some of his ideas in a future blog,” said her distinctively beautiful handwriting. “I can see your headline now…HUMAN BEING on HUMAN DOING. You certainly are a ‘human being,’ Susie. We’re so proud of you.”
I unfolded the two neatly stapled segments from the “Faith & You” section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer entitled, “A great job we can all agree on: Being there for someone.” The subtitle reads: “It has great benefits, is never taxed and overtime can be a blessing.” So many of the nurturing nuggets are soul-filling. Below I will share a few of the life-giving words of wisdom.
- “I’m a retired United Methodist minister and have noticed that I get asked all the time, ‘What are you doing in your retirement,” Terry Pluto quotes one subscriber. “I either don’t have an answer, or I realize that the things I have said I was going to do have mostly not happened… I feel guilty when I haven’t had a ‘productive day,’ or when I don’t have a plan to accomplish something that my mind will approve of. I do think men as a demographic are more hung up than women on reaching career goals and accomplishments – at least women in my age group – but I’ve always believed that being present is the most important thing we can do in any relationship.”
- “This letter brought up a key point,” writes Terry. “Sometimes, what we ‘do’ is being with someone. It’s listening. It’s maybe talking about sports or family, or telling old stories with someone who is in emotional pain. At the end, it’s hard to say what we ‘did.’ The time went by and there seems to be nothing tangible to show for it. Those of us who have elderly friends or relatives know how most of them value us ‘being’ with them. It could mean watching the same show with them – and discovering they fell asleep!”
- “My wife is very good at ‘being’ as opposed to ‘doing,'” admits Terry. “I’ve had to work on ‘making small talk’ with some people because I’ve learned it can be a big deal to them that day. Being there is doing something worthwhile, even when it doesn’t feel like it. As another subscriber email points out, ‘I heard someone say, “We are human BEINGS not human DOINGS.”‘”
- “One’s occupation can be a measure of interest, devotion to job, devotion (or lack thereof) to community,” adds another subscriber. “You can add in ambition, and yes, money. Whenever I see someone’s huge mansion, I nearly always ask, ‘What do they do for a living?’ I always try to remind everyone, ‘Our worth is not measured by our jobs.’ But when we lose a job, we feel somehow diminished by external forces. When we finally retire, will we feel less valued? Working does give our lives extra meaning, especially if we see/feel/measure the fruits of our labor. Yet, a career is not one job, but the overall trajectory of life-and-jobs-and-experience. It can be easy to measure worth in a career. And detrimental. We spend so much time working, we might forget about the world around us.”
- “This reader’s point about feeling devastated when losing a job goes beyond have a certain status based on what we do,” Terry explains. “The job takes up time. With most jobs, at the end of a work day you can see something accomplished, from waiting on customers to packing boxes to making deliveries. When we go home, we also know we have earned some money. Part of doing a good job is investing part of ourselves in the job. People don’t need a paying job, but they do need a mission – a reason to get up in the morning. It’s why volunteer work or even have a regular group to connect with on various projects is so important. I know some people who ‘lost a job’ but then ‘found a new life’ when moving into volunteer ministry or spending time with people who are older in their families. Grandparents can have a huge impact on their grandkids because they have more time to ‘be’ with them.”
- “I spent most of my life in construction management,” Terry quotes another subscriber. “I spent most of my 40s and 50s answering that ‘What do you do?’ question with, ‘I’ve been married to the same woman for ___ years, and we have three great kids!’ That got a lot of weird looks. It’s not that I wasn’t proud of my career. I managed construction on some recognizable buildings in town and in Las Vegas. It was more that I didn’t want to be defined by my occupation.”
- “Think about being in a hospital waiting room, a doctor’s office or an extended living facility,” Terry concludes. “I know, we can’t go to most of those places now because of all the COVID-19 restrictions. That creates another set of problems. But when we are with strangers who are in the middle of a health crisis, that becomes the most important thing. People waiting while their loved ones have surgery don’t immediately ask, ‘What do you do for a living?’ Instead, it’s the medical condition of the patient. The surgery. The post-surgery plan. The long-term prognosis. Those concerns can bring everyone together, sometimes in prayer, as strangers await word from the medical people. The conversations often turn toward families. There may be tears. But what usually happens in these situations is people see each other…as…well…people. And ‘being there’ for each other means so much.”
I am so grateful for all of the vibrant people in my bundle who continue to amplify the love of God: “We are human BEINGS not human DOINGS.”
…the living truth that has a permanent home in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace belong to us, flowing from the presence of God the Father and from Jesus Christ, Son of the Father and from the realm of true love (2 John 1:2-3, TPT).
…Sue…
