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I was coming home on the subway late yesterday evening from a friend’s place when I happened to see my reflection in the subway car door window. It had been raining earlier. I was wearing a long overcoat, and carrying an umbrella. I also had my bag slung over my shoulder. But what struck me the most was how old I looked.
In some ways I still feel like I’m a kid. Sometimes I feel like I’m the same goofy-haired person that graduated from high school in 1998; the same kid that suffered cluelessly through five years of college. I had no idea what friendship was, and I felt so distant from other people, unknowingly craving personal interaction, and closed off in my own little self-imposed, and sometimes self-righteous spiritual hermitage, that I had no inkling of the thoughts and feelings of others. Things were done for me. I had ready resources. But while something inside of me knew that I should be doing more, the wallowing comfort I enjoyed was sometimes more appealing to me than a thousand risky adventures.
Seeing a grown-up face underneath the same goofy hair in the window of the subway door was something of a surprise to me. I don’t make a habit of mirror-gazing. I know what I look like well enough. But the look on my face, the curve of my jaw, and the size of my hands as the gripped the handle of the umbrella reminded me of something that I often frget: I am a man. I am a grown-up. I have ready resources, and it’s time for a risky adventure.
The one important thing that God taught me in college was the mystery of the human heart. It was his version of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. He showed me how to see people from the inside out, how to read them and let them know that there is a God out there who cares. He taught me how to empathize with lonely hearts because I myself have been lonely, and it was God who sent people to me without my knowledge or request to open my eyes to the wonders of personal relationships.
The one important thing that God is teaching me now is how to calculate and take risk. I am a timid person by nature. I won’t step where I can’t see a foothold, and I won’t release something unless I know it will come back to me. The heart of a conserver is the same as the heart of a miser. I’m constantly reminded of the man who buried his one talent in the earth because he was afraid of loosing it. His master called him wicked.
The spiritual art of adventure is just as important as the spiritual art of relationship. But it seems in my case that God has thought it better to develop adventurousness in me now than before. Maybe I was too naive before. Maybe I had to grow up. Whatever the reason, I am a man now, and manhood brings with it the responsibility of risk-taking. My own reflection in a subway car window is not normally something that would catch my attention, but for a brief second in time it was required of me to look back and see where I have been in order to know where I am and where I am going.