“We were both right!”
The girl I mentor, who is now a whopping 14, said this jubilantly as she got in my car a couple of weeks ago, heading to her hip-hop dance class.
I didn’t even know what she was referring to, but I loved what she said immediately.
Turns out, I was right about the remaining cost of the 8th grade trip to Washington D.C. But, in a way, she was too, because a few days before she hadn’t taken into account the cost of the bus ride down to Boston.
She was getting our evening off to a great start by showing that she considered me fully on her team: we were in this together.
Sometimes, in a single moment, you see how a person has grown and it takes your breath away.
Yesterday, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday were, in another kind of way, both right, too. My guess is that many of us weren’t sure exactly how to feel. We were paying tribute to the glory of love and recognizing the reality of sin and eventual death — all in one fell swoop of 24 hours.
The thing is, though, every single normal day contains elements of these kinds of highs and lows, too. Who hasn’t been elated and grateful one minute; somber and regretful practically the next?
The morning started out just plain weird. I was in our old hometown, getting to visit with good friends, re-connecting and giving them chocolate hearts; meanwhile, I was thinking of my husband putting ashes on churchgoers’ foreheads. By day’s end, though, as we all heard the sickening news from the school shooting in Florida, we were groping in a collective darkness.
And yet, before I turned into bed, I saw that a few of my friends always have their birthdays on Feb. 14th; I needed and wanted to wish them well.
When I consider the plight – if that’s the right word– of the woman who has won the $560 million Powerball jackpot not far away, I am inclined to think that both she, pushing to keep her name private, and the state, insisting that it must be made public, are right. Apparently, the guy in charge of the lottery called the winning ticket “the most valuable piece of paper on the planet, more valuable than a Rembrandt.” Suddenly, New Hampshire has joined the big leagues.
However accurate his statement is, it’s a relief to know that the world offers many other kinds of riches, on every continent.
Of course being right isn’t everything – far from it. And wanting to give assent every which way can get confusing. But nine times out of ten, being willing to see that there might be room in your definitiveness for a slightly different perspective, even if it means—as it did yesterday—acknowledging while you enter Lent that love is indeed still glorious or while you’re dizzy in love that the end of life is an unavoidable fact, well, this capacity can lift you up to a wider and more completely truthful view.
Yes, days like yesterday offer the kind of panorama that makes you pause, maybe gasping, to look in every direction, so as not to miss anything.