Nate Nasralla's Blog, page 4

eat watermelons, slow down, and you’ll see more in life

This is the second part of the weekly blog series, where I'll be posting a new excerpt from my upcoming book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, right here each week.

If you missed the first post, go back and check out Part 1 here.

Costa Rican Watermelons- slow down and you’ll see more in life -

"I didn’t know that we’d end up there. It just sort of happened. So ultimately, after deciding to slow down, I was actually seeing more of the country and absorbing more of our trip."

The majority of my days feel like plain vanilla ice cream. Unremarkable and predictable.

I eat, get dressed, commute, and spend time transitioning from one routine to another. Can you relate? It would seem, then, that breaking from my daily schedule to backpack Latin America for weeks with a good friend would have produced all kinds of new learning and maturity. In reality, the excess of new experiences and photogenic moments distracted me from an important reality. I missed the fact that we don’t need exotic trips to learn from life. We just need to look around. I found that when I finally stopped hurrying from one adventure to the next, I began to grow. I actually saw more of the country by slowing down.

“Dude. This. Sucks,” Greg said as he lay out on the hard tile floor at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. He rolled over as I nodded in agreement. I glanced at my watch. It was about 1:00 a.m. We had been lying on the ground for three hours thanks to a flight delay, and we weren’t interested in experimenting with the only restaurant in the terminal. It served warm beer and “Chicago” style hot dogs from rotating warming trays.

“Yeah… not quite the start we were hoping for,” I laughed half-heartedly.

I was too tired to laugh, but I had to feign some excitement like it was all just a part of the adventure. Greg and I had $4,000 in traveling money between us, and we’d decided to travel to Nicaragua and Costa Rica for one month before we each started new jobs. I had been hired to work for a consulting firm in Chicago. Greg was headed off to work for a big energy company in Philadelphia. It seemed appropriate that a new adventure would precede new cities, new jobs, and new paychecks.

Here’s a travel tip for you. If you’re planning to travel with only $2,000 to your name, you need to start with a fair amount of confidence that you won’t run out of money along the way. So, to save for food and hostels, Greg and I decided we’d book our flights to Managua, Nicaragua on some budget airline known for canceling or changing flights without warning.

Clearly, our idea wasn’t as smart as it first sounded.

I reached into my backpack and grabbed a small folder of papers. “We planned this trip down a T, but I guess that doesn’t mean we’ll get to follow the plan,” I said to Greg. I realized then that backpacking requires an odd blend of meticulousness when planning a route, but spontaneity to actually travel it.

“Now boarding: All passengers to Managua. Please, line up near the gate.”

“Thank heavens. Let’s go, Greg.”

Once aboard our plane, I settled into my seat and slipped my sandals off my feet. I stretched out to the whopping 20” of legroom that tin-can-of-an-airplane allowed, and I closed my eyes. I wondered if we’d encounter more setbacks once we landed in Nicaragua, or if we’d have a smoother trip from that point forward. The engines spooled up and the pilot taxied out to the runway through the humid summer air. I created future Instagram captions in my head while drifting off to sleep, “Here we are diving into an active volcano to catch alligators…”

“So, man, what do you wanna do?”

Greg set his phone on his chest and lifted his head from his pillow, awaiting my response. We had done a lot of traveling already, and we had generally stuck to our plan. We checked off cities and experiences from our list, one after the other. We actually did climb an active volcano (sadly, there were no alligators), surfed next to small sharks, and watched the sun set over the ocean while eating tacos from a little lady grilling on a roadside cart. By all standards, we had moved from one extraordinary adventure to another. Even traveling from city to city was interesting. We’d throw our backpacks atop a 10-passenger van and cruise the narrow streets, taking it all in.

Despite it all, I had grown restless.

Sitting on our hostel beds, I found myself looking for the next big thing. I didn’t feel full. I just wanted to do, see, and explore more. I felt like our trip, if not built on one bold moment after another, wouldn’t be that epic pre-wife-and-kids trip you recall with a longing fondness as you try to calm a baby that’s crying and pooping at 3 a.m.

“I’m not sure man, but I know I want to do something. Why don’t we just go outside? We can walk around until we find something. Or at least until something finds us.”

I framed it as a suggestion, but before Greg could reply, I had already put on my sandals and sat at the edge of my bed. I was halfway to the door by the time Greg shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Sure man, whatever you want.”

He would have given me the same shrug regardless. That’s Greg. He was the ultimate travel companion. Up for whatever and content with anything from playing games on his cell phone to jumping off the tallest bungee platform in Latin America (which we also did). If I was honest with myself, I’d have admitted I envied Greg’s ability to enjoy our ordinary moments just as much as the high-octane ones. It was clear Greg’s ease would sustain him after our trip, continuing in his everyday life at work and home.

I wanted that inner calm.

Throughout our trip, Greg’s needs were pretty modest. He focused on two things; finding one good bottle of wine and ensuring we had enough capital left in our bank accounts to buy it. That’s all he cared about. My mind, on the other hand, was an unquenchable firestorm. As soon as we finished one activity, I was already burning for the next and figuring out the fastest way to get there. Instead of relishing the high of a new experience, I was over that event, past its memory, and yearning for something different.

Greg slapped on some sandals and pulled on a yellow tank top he’d bought for $1 on the beach. Then, we left the hostel to cure my restlessness. We wandered down the county road for 15 minutes before Greg finally asked, “Where are we going?”

We had drifted by the fire station, the local park, a grocery store, and we’d pretty much covered everything our little Costa Rican mountain town offered. “To that corner store,” I pointed straight ahead. “I’m thirsty. You want something? Maybe they have ice cream.”           

We hadn’t found anything to do, but I figured I’d drive Greg nuts if we just kept wandering around until we stumbled across something unique enough to satiate my hunger for adventure. I stepped into the little store and scanned the rows of snacks. I saw a little woman sitting behind the counter, quietly counting coins and ignoring us as we stepped inside.

“Hola,” I said as I walked toward a standing refrigerator. I eased the glass door open and tossed Greg a frosty bottle of Coca-Cola.

“We’re looking for something to do. Is there anything you recommend?” I asked her in Spanish.

Have you ever seen the movie Pirates of the Caribbean? Where the pirates become part of the ship’s mast and railings after living at sea for so long? It was the same deal with this woman. I guessed she had been sitting on that same stool since she was a teenager, restocking rows of chips for decades. I assumed that after her years of shop-tending and coin-counting, she’d know more about the town than Google and a guidebook combined.

I leveraged my Spanish to learn that not far up the road, while the tourists paid $90 to relax in fancy hot springs fed by the Arenal volcano, the locals had their own hangout in the same thermal streams. The shop tender said that if we journeyed up the hillside for a half-mile to a wooded entrance hidden on the side of the county road and passed a few low-hanging trees, there would be a clearing that opened into a set of naturally formed rock baths (simple directions, right?). Each cascaded into the next, all fed by the volcano’s heat, creating a hideaway for the city’s Ticos (a.k.a. locals) to enjoy.

She told that us that with some “sandias y cervezas” – watermelons and beer – we’d make fast friends. I relayed the good news to Greg, who speaks Portuguese but not Spanish, and I saw him flash a smile. I paid for our supplies and with some extra direction from the woman, we learned how to direct a taxi to the right spot along the highway.

It was almost sundown as we stepped back onto the street, so we decided to head straight to the rock baths. Greg whispered as we walked, “I wonder what other secrets that lady’s hiding behind her counter.”

“Want beer?” I asked in Spanish, holding up a few cans above the steam and passing them to our neighbors sitting in a pool of thermal water.

“This is pretty wild, dude. Who would have guessed there’s a rainforest paradise hanging out behind some trees on the side of a random highway?” Greg said while slamming a watermelon on a pointed rock.

He stuck a spoon in my half of the watermelon and passed it to me. “Yeah man. It’s amazing. Refreshing, too. Too bad it’s so dark now. I can’t even take a picture,” I lamented.

“Maybe that’s part of the beauty,” Greg said. “I mean, we just have to enjoy it in the moment, you know? It’s one of those things we’ll get to remember in our heads.”

I sank down and dipped my head below the water. Bubbles leaked from my nose as they escaped back to the surface. I thought about Greg’s words after drowning out the sounds around me. We had completed most of our journey at this point, but I was just beginning to realize that in my quest to create an extraordinary trek – documenting each step with photos and videos and searching for one high after another – I had been trading joy in the present for thrills in the future. I cared more about recounting impressive past stories than savoring them as I lived them with a beloved friend.

I obsessed over finding new highs, and I had overlooked the wonder all around me. I breezed past the simple beauty in spending time with one of my best friends. I robbed myself of the bliss found in just looking around. I was always searching for the “next big thing.”

We stumbled into an incredible memory of Costa Rican hot springs and watermelons because two people were living their ordinary, everyday lives. Had we not wandered into that store and met the woman who’d sat behind its counter for years, we’d never have discovered such a picturesque, local secret. If not for the taxi driver who’d driven the same roads for years, we may never have found the hot springs along the highway’s curves.

“I think it’s good not to have expectations. Just to feel what we feel and find what we find,” I said to Greg after emerging from the water, sharing what I’d discovered below the surface.

“Yep, I totally agree,” Greg said, closing his eyes and laying back.

I continued, “I don’t think I’m very good at slowing down. I don’t really soak up what’s happening around me. You know? Like, I need to look at all the good our life is so full of. I think I’m supposed to be learning that.”

“I also agree with that,” Greg laughed as he listened to me uncover what he’d known all along.

We sat in those baths eating watermelons and drinking beer for a good while longer, appreciating the moments for what they were instead of how they compared to our expectations. The longer we sat, the more content I felt. The longer I absorbed the conversations around me, the less interested I became in moving on to the next activity. I was no longer sitting in suspense of the trip’s next step. I felt free from the weight of my mental expectations.

Ultimately, I was in fact seeing more of the country after deciding to slow down.

There are two battles fought on opposite fronts that block us from noticing the natural wonder in our lives. The first and more prominent battle for me is a hyper-focus on success.

I forget to slow down and squeeze the learning out of my life’s current season because I’m too focused on catching the next shiny object. I don’t sit still, and I miss the small miracles of life as a result. I wake up demanding something new from the world each morning, forgetting that simply waking up is a gift.

Chasing success may get us to the pinnacle in one season of life, but it leaves us searching for something more in the next. Conquest sounds big and meaningful, but the idea that increasing accomplishment can fulfill our deepest longings is a slippery temptation with no end in sight. Personally, my demands for instant gratification and my impatience for success too often disrupt the maturity that’s gained through steadily pursuing a long-term goal.

The second and opposite battle we fight is apathy. Apathy leaves us feeling drained and disinterested in watching the stories unfolding all around us. It expresses itself as indifference instead of scurrying from one high to the next. It sucks your energy. It actually requires a tremendous amount of focus and intentionality to find depth and meaning in the relationships and rhythms of our everyday lives. Rich life lessons surround us all the time, but routine and familiarity can camouflage them.

Apathy is like standing in our backyards and assuming we’ve already turned over all the stones and counted all the rocks, so it must be time to move on. In the process, we overlook the trees, flowers, and blossoming plants waiting for us to notice their beauty. It’s like taking a Rock Climbing 101 class at your local gym and concluding that scaling Mt. Everest couldn’t be too different. That box has been checked! Time to move on.

Apathy is not conscious neglect. Often, we just forget to pick our heads up from the daily grind and look around.

On my worst days, I feel like I’m fighting these two battles at once. I want the high of knowing what will happen during the next chapter of my life, but without the slow build-up and steady effort required to get there. I hurry past the plush, colorful settings and dynamic characters in chapter five, instead of expending the energy to study them. As a result, I miss my chance to start chapter six with richer context and fuller appreciation.

Now, of course, we can’t know when we’ll breathe our last breath, so we also can’t know where exactly we are in our life stories. We may have years’ worth of chapters remaining, we might not. But, we do know with certainty that all stories come to an end. In rare moments of clarity, I’m able to remind myself that making it to the end isn’t the goal. We were created to enjoy our stories as the plot slowly reveals itself. We shouldn’t have to skip ahead to the last page.

We weren’t meant to write our own stories, you see. If we were, we’d know our lives’ expiration dates and we’d have total control over the events that unfolded before then.

You’ll discover this as you continue reading – we’re not authors, we’re just characters. Each one of us was created to play a specific role in a much larger, communal story about our world. This story’s collective plot, which governs every part of our lives, was set in motion by God, our Creator, centuries ago. In what I’ll call the “Big Story” of our world, God included two universal themes: the principle of paradox and the story framework. These two themes are the keys to discovering deeper meaning and greater purpose in the ordinary and everyday moments of our lives, including my life and your own (no backpacking trips required, by the way).

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how to uncover more meaning in your ordinary, everyday life

This is the first part of a weekly series, where I'll be posting an excerpt from one chapter in my latest book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, right here on the blog. Check back each week for a new release, or, after reading this first post as an intro, download a free preview.

Are you living a meaningful life?

If we’re honest, most of us will answer “not sure,” or “not really.” It’s not an easy question to emphatically answer, “yes!”

The reality is that our days are often filled with more routines than grand adventures, and we’re not fulfilled by the common things in life. Eating cereal, sitting in traffic, and staying home on a Saturday when plans fall through won’t make the headlines and highlights displayed on our social media feeds. Instead, we’re captivated by the extraordinary things which will never happen within a normal week – getting a big promotion, finishing a marathon, buying a new car.

I believe, however, that your regular life is far more significant than you realize. There is deep meaning hiding in your everyday conversations and ordinary interactions – you just can’t see it in the moment. You and I both need a framework to help us uncover more of the meaning in our ordinary, everyday lives.

We need more stories. We love stories, you see. It’s how we’re wired. Well-crafted stories stick with us. They allow us to recall life lessons in a memorable way. They also help us see the big picture during frustrating and disappointing circumstances. We even build our identities around stories. Where we came from, where we’re going, the highs and lows – it’s all part of the narratives we tell to the world.

When you begin to look at your life as one big story and recount your past, you’ll discover that meaning often looks different from what we would have expected. Life’s universal truths repeatedly show up in ways that feel strange to us.

For example, it’s easiest to hurt those we love most. The smallest steps achieve the biggest goals. Disappointing beginnings create happy endings.

That all feels a little backward, right?

I noticed this after cycling through a rapid series of major life changes within a single year. After moving cities, merging companies, and getting married, all around the same time, I needed to process the change in a healthy way. Writing is therapeutic to me, so I began to create short stories from a series of notes I had jotted down during the preceding years. Whenever something special or notable stuck out to me, I opened the Notes app on my phone and I wrote down a quote I read, something a friend said over dinner, or a thought I had while jogging.

As I wrote and then connected these stories in a timeline, I noticed one consistent theme in every season of my life – paradox. A paradox is a feeling or experience that appears strange or backward in the moment, but it actually makes complete sense in the larger context.

I’ve come to believe our lives are shaped by these two principles: paradox and storytelling. You’ll see it’s true when you look back on your own life’s events in one, overarching story. You’ll discover there is a greater, unseen purpose behind it all, even when your circumstances don’t feel significant. When life doesn’t make sense, it’s because the plotline is still unfolding in ways you don’t expect. I wrote this book to help you see how these two principles are at work in your life.

Now, the great thing about stories is they’re universal – you have a life story, as does everyone else. And because every story ever written contains conflict, we know that we’ll all encounter conflict at some point in our lives. Sooner or later, we find ourselves facing a crossroads, difficult decisions, or relational strain. In these moments of tension, we don’t often understand the long-term significance of what’s developing. We rarely value the experience as we live it. It’s only after making it to the other side of conflict that we can look back, find meaning, and apply a new lesson to our lives as we keep on living forward.

While I’ve watched friends navigate conflicts that happen to them – illness, death, unexpected tragedies – my greatest struggles seem to rise up from within me – anxiety, fear, loneliness. Conflict in my story has felt like friendly-fire. Something that’s unexpected, bewildering, and it leaves you uncertain about how to fight back.

As you continue to read this blog and my latest book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, you’ll see that my story’s conflicts continually leave me saying, “This again?” I face the battles I thought I had already fought (and won) time and time again. It’s demoralizing to feel like I’m always re-fighting the same battles. Nonetheless, I’ve never kept a daily journal nor committed much time to reflect on my life, so I often repeat the errors from which I should have already learned. As you read on, my hope is that you learn from these mistakes.

More importantly, my hope is that you discover how these two concepts, the framework of storytelling and the principle of paradox, will help you uncover more meaning in the ordinary, everyday moments of your own life.

If you come from a faith-based worldview, you’ll notice that these two elements consistently and coherently align with the Christian worldview. If you don’t come from any faith-based worldview, keep reading. Understanding these elements will help you discover greater meaning in your everyday life too, regardless of your religious beliefs. 

Want to read more?

Make sure to check back each week for a new post, or, go ahead and download the complete first three chapters of Living Forward, Looking Backward below.

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a guy so excited he wore overalls on the airplane

“Sorry folks, we’re going to need everyone to sit back down. We’ve discovered some mechanical issues that are gonna push back our departure time.”

I knew the drill. I’m an itinerant. I was once on 63 flights in a six-month stretch. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those ominous words in an airport. Although, I hadn’t heard them in the Dallas airport before. I guess that was a first of sorts.

My Southwest A14 boarding pass meant someone else had already encroached on my former gate-side seat while I stood in line, waiting to board. It was one of the good ones with an outlet and a window that let in natural light, too.

I shuffled through the throngs of people and roller-bags to scout out a new place to setup camp for a few more minutes. Hopefully minutes. Possibly hours. “Mechanical” isn’t exactly a word you hope for in your delayed-flight announcement.

I found a pair of open seats a few rows away from the gate and I dropped my duffel bag onto one. As I settled into the other, I felt an unpleasant heat radiating from the black pleather. Someone had abandoned the seat not long before I arrived. I slipped my phone from my pocket and pulled up my conversation with a friend, Jeff.

“Dude,” I tapped out a quick message to Jeff. “I might be getting into Denver a bit later than expected... stay tuned.”

Jeff and his fiancé were flying from Chicago to ski with my wife, Erin, and me. My flight was scheduled to land two hours before theirs, but after the Dallas gate agent made another announcement 30 minutes later, “We’re now looking into other available aircraft that can get everyone home safely,” I was just hoping to arrive in Denver on the same day.

“Hey man, could I join you?”

I looked up from my phone and didn’t expect to see what I saw. A man in his mid-thirties wearing a sheepish grin and an equally goofy pair of overalls stood in front me. He pointed to my duffel bag, implying he wanted to sit where it was sitting.

His overalls were actually bib-style snow-pants that rose over his shoulders and clipped in the front. They had extra padding around the knees and waist, like most toddlers wear as they learn to ski for the first time. I was confused why someone would be wearing snow-pants in Texas – let alone in an airport – before remembering I was headed home to Denver.

“Sure, yeah. You’re going skiing this weekend, I imagine?” I replied as I cleared the seat for him. I wondered if it was his insulated-overalls that incubated my seat before I arrived, leaving it extra-warm for me.

“Yep! This will be my first time. Ever. I’m meeting some friends. I don’t think they’re going to be too happy to see me if we arrive real late, though.” He confirmed and shared that we were in the same boat.

“Yeah, I think some friends will be waiting on me too. Unfortunately. But your first time skiing, that’s exciting. What mountain are you headed to?” I inquired.

“I’m not really sure. They say they’re going to watch the weather and we’ll go where the going’s good. I think we’re probably going to Gunnison as of right now. Or in that area. Ever heard of it?” He asked in reply.

“Oh, nice. Yeah, I was just there a few weeks ago. That’s some ambitious terrain for your first time.”

“Wherever I end up is fine with me. I just can’t wait to be out there,” he beamed as he described how thrilled he was to be spending the weekend in the Rockies. 

“I work in the oil fields, you see. All my life I’ve worked there so I never really had the thought to go skiing until some friends moved to Colorado and said I should visit. I’ve never seen so much snow, and I don’t really know what to expect, so I figure I might as well get used to the gear.” He thumbed his overall straps, snapping them against his chest.

I smiled. I couldn’t help but appreciate how this fellow’s eager anticipation for a weekend of skiing had moved him to wear his overalls on an airplane.  

“I think you’ll have fun. It’ll be different than Texas, but you’ll have a blast,” I said before turning back to my phone to text Erin my new ETA.

Southwest had updated our arrival time to two hours past the originally-scheduled arrival. If all worked out, I’d land in Denver at the same time as Jeff.

I looked up from my phone and glanced at a TV mounted in the corner of the gate area.

There was a commercial for Hennessy, the liquor, playing on the screen. Some footage of impressive people doing impressive things rolled along before the words, “Never Stop, Never Settle,” appeared next to a bottle of alcohol.

My first thought was to question the validity of the apparent link between drinking Hennessey and accomplishing extraordinary things. My second thought was born from the stark contrast between the tagline, “Never Stop, Never Settle,” and my new overall-wearing friend.

Sitting six inches to my left was a man so giddy and chock-full of delight to be skiing for the first time that he’d decided to wear his overalls to the airport. But featured on the screen in front of me, I saw the American ideal of incessant achievement and relentless consumption proclaimed.

“If we could recall feeling the simple joy in living something for the first time, like Mr. Overalls, would that fill the void we daily try to fill with more, and more-extraordinary experiences?”

The dichotomy illuminated a new, seemingly-backward life truth in my mind: the more we consume, the less satisfied we feel.

Mr. Overalls wasn’t heading to South Korea to compete in the Sochi Olympics. He wasn’t going to be jumping from a helicopter attempting to ride unadultered, boulder-ridden slopes that no man had dared attempt before him. He was keen to slap on a pair of beat-up rentals and experience the exhilaration of bunny slopes that have just enough pitch that you can make it to the bottom without the help of poles.

How often do we feel bogged down by the regular, run-of-the-mill experiences like hanging out on the bunny hill? If we could recall feeling the simple joy in living something for the first time, like Mr. Overalls, would that fill the void we daily try to fill with more, and more-extraordinary experiences?

I’ll admit it. I’m guiltier of “never stopping, never settling,” than most reading this blog.

Regularly, Erin has to rest her hand on my leg to prevent it from rapidly bopping up and down in restless, uncontended energy. Nate without a new goal or project is Nate in his worst form. I become insatiable and irritable. I feel like a lesser person because I’m not living on the limit of some novel, never-discovered frontier.

But, where’s the meaning in “never settling?”

If we were to survey our personal conquests, most would begin with the statement, “If I could just…” or, “If I could only…” I’d bet you’ve not only heard this, you’ve said it.

“Then” and some false promise usually follows these statements. “If I could just increase my salary to six-figures, then I’d be content.” Or, “If I could only finish that marathon a little faster, then I’d stop spending so much money on new gear.”

Maybe that feels a little too over-achiever to you. Maybe you’ve said something like, “If I could just get one more promotion, then I’d spend more free time with my family.”

Consumption is a bottomless pit that will never be filled, will always demand, and cannot offer us any path to true satisfaction. Instead, if we understand more consumption does not equate satisfaction, and recall the “feeling of the first-time,” we’ll find greater fulfillment during our ordinary days.

To an even greater extent, if we’ve identified the central purpose behind life itself – not just the activities and hobbies we spend our time on – we won’t be forced to look for the cheap, fleeting contentment that consumerism offers.

If that’s a topic that interests you, it’s one that I cover in great depth and detail in my book, Living Forward, Looking Backward. 

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what a blind haircut taught me

We live in a world full of headlines and highlights. 

News, photos, feeds, all media we consume is sensationalized to break through our noisy world and into our attention. It has to be. Our attention spans have grown schizophrenic (they are, in fact, shorter than a goldfish’s). Our minds have grown weary from media overload. 

Each of us sees 3,000 unique brand impressions each day, and we consume information from 8 different applications, on average. It’s no wonder we’ve become numb to the ordinary and average things in life. Only the extraordinary messages break through out of necessity - our brains are forced to filter through what’s important and what’s not. 

The challenge, however, is not everything sensational is meaningful.  Not everything that shocks us brings us life.

To find more meaning during our ordinary days, we need to strip away the stimulus. That’s the paradox of our 5 senses. If you strip away one, the others become more sensitive. 

The more we shut down the flow of information, the more we absorb.

Just like a deaf child visiting the barbershop.   

I peered past my Entrepreneur magazine and noticed a slender black pole sitting in the middle of the walkway. I was sitting on a leather cushioned seat waiting my turn at the barbershop.

Someone’s going to trip over that thing, I thought to myself. 

As I looked up to locate the source of the tripping hazard, I realized that the pole was actually designed to prevent someone from tripping. A child wearing black sunglasses and a crooked smile was gripping the pole's leather-bound handle. He looked wistfully toward the front of the shop as a small bell signaled that another patron had entered. 

“James?” A stylist called out.

James’ mother accompanied him to the overstuffed, old-fashioned barber’s chair and removed the stick from his hand. She conferred with the stylist for a moment, sharing that he liked his hair short on top, but not so short that he couldn’t run his fingers through it. He seemed to be 9, perhaps 10 years old. 

The stylist fired up her clippers and brought them near James’ ear to trim the sides. He winced, recoiling from the loud noise of the mechanical shears. His nose wrinkled and his brow furrowed as she navigated the clippers toward his neck. 

He must use sound to help interpret what’s friendly and what’s dangerous to him, I figured.

While I’ve never been blind, I imagine that if you’re walking along the sidewalk and you hear something very loud behind you, your instincts will tell you to jump far away from the road.

Or, if you had your sight but not your hearing, the equivalent would be someone swinging a baseball bat just inches from your eyes. Even if you knew what was going to happen, you wouldn't be able to help but flinch. 

I glanced over to his mom, who had picked up her book. I wanted to make sure I could be observant without being offensive by staring for too long. 

The stylist rotated James’ head to face forward. He was craning his neck toward new sounds as they popped up around the shop. He seemed quite curious to know what was happening around him, while I had no problem tuning out the shop’s white noise while reading.

After some time, the stylist leaned on the chair's silver lever to recline the back toward a sink.

James smiled the kind of wide, open-mouth smiles you see on rollercoasters as he was leaned backward to the sink basin. He laughed as he felt the pressurized water and sudsy hands running through his hair. 

Will I have that much fun getting my hair shampooed today? I didn't think so.

After a quick towel dry and comb, James stood up from the barber’s chair for his mom to admire his fresh cut. She beamed as she told him how nice he looked. He just smiled back.

I normally love going to the barbershop, but not this day.

I felt more frustrated than anything as I waited for my turn in the chair. My wait took longer than I had been told it would take. Which meant I’d have less time to finish the lighting project I was working on at home. Which meant I wouldn’t cook dinner until I was already hungry. Which meant I’d be a grouch to my wife (and so on).

These were all trivial concerns, but as I oscillated between email on my phone, ESPN on the TV, and my magazine to try to medicate my impatience, the more restless I grew.

As I watched James walk out of the barber shop, guided by his stick and mother, I decided to pocket my phone and set my magazine in its rack. I folded my arms and I sat back in my chair.

How fitting that someone who lost their sight helped me see again.

James helped me see the small joys in visiting the barbershop that day, and in the ordinary moments of my every day.

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15 backward but true life-truths

We can't always see what we're doing well (and not so well) when we look at life from our own perspectives.

For an accurate assessment, we have to look from outside ourselves. This is why hearing critical feedback at work, from friends, or our spouses - all outside perspectives - can be difficult to hear. It stings because we never saw it coming.

Trying to look at your life as an outsider is a tough thing to do, however. 

In fact, completely removing your own bias isn't possible.  But, time is on our side. If we want to observe our lives from a near-pure perspective to learn from our past, time is the best asset we have. 

Time numbs the emotional fog that obfuscates our judgment in the moment, and time affords us a new set of experiences that can shape the lens through which we evaluate our past. 

In my latest book, I talk about how recording years of quotes, conversations, and interesting facts on the Notes app in my phone enabled me to look back at my life story from an "outsider's perspective."  In this process, I identified a framework that exists in each of our lives – paradox.  

A paradox is a feeling or an experience that feels strange or backward in the moment, but it actually makes complete sense once you step back and look at the whole picture. 

I believe our lives are built on this principle of paradox. That's important, because understanding this not only helps us see the greater purpose behind our lives' most frustrating or confusing experiences, but the ordinary and everyday moments, too.

So, here's a list of paradoxes that have showed up in my life over the last few years. As you read, I'd be curious, which have you seen in your life?  What others have you seen, but I haven't mentioned here? Please comment, I'd love to hear from you.

Slow down and you’ll see more in life.

The bigger the failure the more learning you gain.

Ordinary people become our biggest heroes.

Paradox is the norm, not the exception.

We find true rest while we’re still at work.

Extraordinary moments are found in everyday settings.

The simplest gestures carry the most significant meaning.

The biggest goals are achieved by the smallest steps.

You only earn grace when you stop trying.

It’s easiest to hurt those you love most.

Your biggest life changes develop the fastest.

Disappointing beginnings create happy endings.

Your life’s deepest joys are found outside yourself.

You always lose something in the process of gaining something.

Complex life lessons come in simple packages.

Coincidentally, each paradox relates to a specific chapter in my upcoming book, Living Forward, Looking Backward. If you're interested in reading a free preview of the first 3 chapters, download it here:

Drop me your email and I'll send you the intro and first 3 chapters of my book, Living Forward, Looking Backward.

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