I had lunch today with one of my best friends, and by some accounts, my own personal life coach and philosopher. I should clarify something about the title "best friend," because I think it's worth noting that sometimes a person is not just one of your closest friends, but truly, one of the best friends you have, in terms of support, counsel, love and wisdom. This woman is just such a friend...a rare and precious gift.
Because I live in Texas, and I was weaned on tex-mex, it is a given that many important meals in my life occur in a tex-mex restaurant....I only regret that today's meal was lunch, and required that I forego the margarita...Today's special: 2 enchiladas, rice & beans...with the sauce of your choice (queso, of course)...$4.99. Awesome.
There is a lot in life that can be figured out over chips & salsa...maybe not everything, but a lot. Seems to me that the recipe for wise counsel usually mixes together a fair dose of what I want to hear, and what I don't want to hear...the one is called flattery, and the other, friendship. I heard many things at lunch today that were encouraging...and then there were the things that I didn't want to hear...on balance, wise counsel. One thing I heard today that I suppose is value-neutral, is this quote from Kierkegaard:
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. -Soren Kierkegaard
At present, I'm not at all sure that I understand life backwards or forwards, but looking backwards can certainly be educational, if one has the stomach to really look hard enough. It's kind of weird that God arranged things the way he did...so that we have to live life forward, without knowing where it's going...or what to expect around the next bend...I could quote the requisite Psalm here...do you know which one I mean? "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" (I think I memorized this verse in the King James version, so my apology for the Queen's English). A common teacher's metaphor for this Psalm is that a lamp only sheds enough light to see just around your feet, and not forward on the path ahead of you...pity that when the scripture was written, headlights had not yet been invented! Nevertheless, it is true that we operate with just enough light to see around our feet...and sometimes the limited light can make moving forward a very hazardous endeavor. Another way to look at this would be to consider how little light we would have at all, were it not for the direction that God provides...
In the end, wisdom might require that we spend time looking backward and forward, with a fair dose of living in the moment to give balance.
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