This week is tough for just about everyone. The ever mounting guillotine of work seems to be always rapidly approaching our exposed academic necks. And that is stressful.
There are Christmas gifts to buy, ugly sweater parties to attend, friends to see before they graduate or go abroad and every club, class and activity having culminating semester events. With full calenders and even fuller minds, it is easy to lose track of what is important: God, family, friends. When we rush to get things done, sometimes we forget why we even do them initially.
I’d like to share with you a story I wrote earlier this year about finding God in all things. I hope that this serves as a reminder (especially to me) of what is important, even as work piles up and life drives us all crazy.
My Grandpa’s Eyes
I wish I had my grandpa’s eyes. Now, they weren’t particularly beautiful. They weren’t a cool color or bright. He didn’t have excellent eyesight either. If you looked into his eyes, you would have to look through thick lenses into tired, brown eyes. But what he saw with those eyes was extraordinary. He saw the best in everything.
My grandpa is one of my heroes. I remember one night I was staying at my grandparent’s house when I was young. My grandpa went out to the store to pick up a few things that evening. My grandma was preparing dinner and it was ready before he was back. So we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, he came back, about an hour after expected. When my grandma asked him where he was, he told us that he had stopped by the church to sweep the porch. Though she was angry for having to wait, she understood what he saw. He was always looking to serve, to make things better. And he always saw the good in everything.
A Gonzaga student once told me once sentence that changed her life. And then it changed mine.
“Everyone you will ever meet has infinite worth.”
Whenever I think about these words, elegant in their simplicity, I think about my grandpa. Even though he never said them, these are words he lived by. He was always so positive and had the wonder and awe of a child. Even though life was never easy for him or for his family and he worked all his life to make ends meet, he still had a vitality of life that few people carry with them. He saw God in all things.
I often struggle seeing the good in people. I am a pretty chill person but I have very little patience for incompetence or difficult people. I am the guy that will chew out the person behind him who is talking during the movie where most people might just give the turn and look. In my personal life there are people that will go out of my way to avoid. But then I think about how my grandpa saw things.
One of my favorite stories occurred during their 50th wedding anniversary. During the service, the priest asked my grandpa what he thought of my grandma when he first saw her and he said, “I thought she was beautiful and still think she is beautiful.” My grandma said, “I thought he was okay.” His perspective in that moment and in every moment was that of love.
Society often speaks of rose colored glasses with ridicule. People with rose colored glasses see the world not as it is but more pleasant than it really is. It is better to be realistic or pragmatic and see the world as it is, ugliness and all. The question I struggle with everyday, trying to understand my perspective, is are we seeing the world as it really is when we see the world without God? If we don’t find God in all things, is that an accurate view?
Can we see God in poverty, terrorism, world hunger? Can we see God in beauty, achievement, pleasure?
For a long time I thought, if I could only emulate my grandpa, if I could only think positively then I would see God in all things. It was as if I could put on his glasses and see the world through his eyes, like a Mike Posner music video. But it’s not his eyes or his glass that I seek it’s his perspective. I now know that God is in all things, for those that have eyes to see.
Sparky ’13
Philosophy and Finance
