Drawing a Bigger Circle (or) Loving People Again

Me in the middle, where I usually end up.

The past few years have been pretty hard for me.

I don't say that to garner sympathy or to make excuses; but it may help you to understand where I am coming from when I say I need to start loving people again.

I have always been a "people person." I could always find something to love about nearly anyone and I loved interacting with as many different people from as many different walks of life as possible. But the last few years I have found myself becoming a bit of a Humbug.

I can't really point back to when it all started or one single event that started me down the path. I can't even be sure at what point I stopped loving people.

Maybe it was the time I spent working as the Residential Coordinator for a substance abuse program for adolescents.

That job was tough. Not only was it a long week (I started out at nearly 70 hours a week) but the emotional toll was pretty heavy too. I would pour so much of myself into the young people in the program and really didn't have anyone pouring into me at the time.

Maybe it was the long string of disappointments and broken promises.

I have been half way across the country and back chasing down promises and dreams only to have them slip between my fingers or fade away into nothing.

Maybe it was working a year for a guy who told me his goal was to destroy me.

Yep! He thought he was some kind of Marine drill instructor or something. We would meet every morning at 9:00 AM and he would tell me how he was going to tear me down so that he could build me back up as the salesman he needed.

He even told me that he knew I would never "cut it" as a minister, so he "gave" me the task of writing a morning devotional for the company each day as a way to make up for the fact that I would never make it for real.

Yeah, I suppose I have plenty of reasons to be jaded and leery of people; but who doesn't?

The real fact is that every one of us faces our own hardships in life.

We will all face disappointment and betrayal on some level.

It seems like a whole life-time ago.

The trick is what we do with that disappointment.

It seems what I have done is used all the hurt and disappointment to build a wall up around myself, isolating me from everyone else in an attempt to feel "safe."

It was not until I stared recently reading the book The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell that I could clearly see the walls I have built and understand why I thought I needed them in place.

In the book, there are three types of people that are discussed: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

As I read the book I realized how much of a Connector I used to be and how much that really is my nature. I also realized how the last few years have seen me constantly drawing smaller and smaller circles around myself; cutting ties with so many people.

Don't get me wrong. There are sometimes when it is absolutely necessary to cut ties with certain people; people who may be toxic for you. But those people are usually a small few that you come across and not at all the reason for my wholesale withdraw from the human race.

I have come home more than one evening broken, nearly in tears, telling Heather about how I just hate people and how I just want them all to go away.

I have even fantasized about moving away to Montana or maybe Idaho, you know that skinny little part that reaches up to Canada? Yeah, I wanted to move there and live on the side of a mountain an hour away from my closest neighbor.

So, what do I do now?

Well, I have decided to go out of my way to expand my circle again.

I have made a commitment to be more interested in other people and nicer to strangers.

I have decided that I will start loving people again.