114 - Green eyes.
Stepping back from breaking news.
Welcome back. Or welcome.
Breaking news.
“Your eyes are green.” That’s what Ben said to Nancy the other day. He’s three. She’s not.
(Decades ago, I noticed those eyes, too. Back then, she wore green-tinted contacts. Her eyes were very green.)
Hours later, Nancy texted Ben’s mom with his observation. By then it wasn’t breaking news. It was part of a conversation.
Breaking news.
I say that, and some of you think of the beginning of newscasts, the emails you get from the New York Times. According to Wikipedia, breaking news is “a current issue that warrants the interruption of a scheduled broadcast in order to report its details.”
I am aware these days that the constant stream of breaking news is interrupting the scheduled broadcast of our lives.
Our broken hearts are being interrupted with news of systems and patterns and trust being broken. Our conversations with ourselves and others are interrupted with details of conversations and relational conflagrations in other places.
Breaking news has become the scheduled broadcast.
Finding words in hard times means attending to people enough to be aware of their hard times and finding words for them. You and I can interrupt the trauma of constantly breaking news by attending to the person in front of us. Our attentiveness can become the breaking news they need.
Make eye contact. Ben looked at Nancy long enough to see her eyes looking at him.
Listen 10 seconds longer than normal. Nancy heard what he said and remembered it. She could have asked, “What color green?” She could have offered a poptart. She could have ignored him. But she heard him.
Smile.
Offer a box of tissues.
Sit down.
Set your phone on the chair.
Notice the tears.
You can tell, because you know me, that the last few items are not from conversations with Ben. They are actually from interactions at the hospital this week. Moments where the breaking news was actually the breaking heart and breaking body in the room.
I’d write more, but it would feel to me that I was adding more obligation to your life and mine. Obligation to be more helpful. Obligation to level up our compassion. Obligation.
What I want to offer you is opportunity, not obligation. So I’ll stop. Because Ben will be here in 90 minutes and I want to make enough eye contact with him that he’ll know the color of my eyes, too.
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See you next time.
Jon
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The photo is from our friend Meg Hatch