In the almost 13 years that I've worked at SHS, I'd only been on one road trip with a co-worker and that was when my friend Hilary and I drove to Wichita for our former supervisor's retirement luncheon. Well, I'd only been on that one particular co-worker road trip until Tuesday when I joined four fellow employees and traveled to our home office to represent the Dovetail team at the quarterly meeting. The things one learns about one's co-workers while on a road trip can be quite ... ummm ... quite ... ummm ... enlightening. Things like who needs to stop every 50 miles to pee. Or who thinks the most delicious way to eat French fries is to dip them in ice cream. Or who is man enough not to be phased by more than seven hours of "girl talk." Or who buys a salty snack in a store filled with wall-to-wall candy. Our road trip adventure on Tuesday reminded me in many ways of the road trips I took with my children over the years ... I learned more about my kids in the hours we spent road tripping together than I ever did at home, and I learned more about my co-workers on our Tuesday jaunt down the highway than I ever have in the office.
As is true of many people who live in today's over-connected world of technology, those of us who weren't driving on Tuesday spent a significant amount of time checking our email, responding to text messages and of course, perusing Facebook. I was sitting in the back of the van, so when the two gals in front of me began discussing a news story they had seen on Facebook, one of them turned and handed me her phone so I could better understand what they were talking about. I quickly glanced at the headline, reading it as "Woman Crashes Car While Shaving Her Pirates" and immediately had a picture pop into my head of a little old lady crashing her car into the back of a truck while she was trying to shave the beard of the scraggly, eye patch-wearing pirate sitting next to her.
Though it took a couple of minutes of listening to the additional commentary of my co-workers from the seats in front of me, I finally realized I must have misread the headline. The minute I read it again and realized what it really said (I'll help you out a little ... it didn't say "pirates"), the picture I had in my mind of a little old lady shaving a pirate as she drove down the highway was instantly replaced by an entirely different image. Neither the headline nor the new picture that's now stuck in my head involved pirates or little old ladies at all ... nope, nope, nope, not at all.
Needless to say, my co-workers had a big laugh when I told them what I initially thought the headline said, and we've chuckled about it several times since. And I'm pretty sure none of us will ever look at a razor or watch a pirate movie again without thinking about the poor little old lady who crashed her car while shaving her pirates. While my misreading of the headline provided chuckles on Tuesday and will quite probably continue to do so for years to come, it's also caused me to think a lot about something far more important than road trips and pirate shaving. You see, here's the thing ... the really important thing I learned on Tuesday ... I can't and don't know things about other people and they can't and don't know things about me unless we spend time together.
I know this will make some of you angry, but when I say spend time together, I'm not talking about email time or Facebook time or instant messaging time or texting time or talking on the phone time, and I'm most certainly not talking about trying to get information about each other from someone else time. I'm talking about spending the kind of time together that enables us to enjoy what I believe is the greatest gift God ever gave to us as humans created in His image ... deep, meaningful, enduring, honest, giving and trustworthy relationships with one another.
There's no way we can know what's going in each other's lives or who we really are or who makes us laugh (Ellen) or how we've been hurt or what we need to celebrate or what we're struggling with or whom we love or what our dreams are or who our celebrity crush is (Ellen) or how we've failed or what we believe in or what we're afraid of or how we're growing spiritually or what we've accomplished or what has scarred us or what keeps us awake at night or how best to cheer each other on or what our favorite food is or the person we most want to meet (Ellen) or what makes us cry or what we worry about or what we need to be held accountable for ... or countless other things we simply cannot know without spending time ... one-on-one, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, heart-to-heart time together.
Want to know what I think? Want to know what I really, really, really think? I think when I come to the end of my journey here on earth, it won't be the number of words I wrote or the deadlines I met or the housework I did or the clothes I wore or the places I went or the money I made that will matter ... I think what will matter are the pirates I shaved along the way. It will be the time spent together that will matter ... the memories we've made ... the sound of our laughter ... the warmth of our hugs ... the tears we've shared ... the celebrations we've had ... the burdens we've carried together ... it will be the time spent together on the trip of life that will matter most of all. Keep your eyes and your hearts and your ears wide open, and don't ever let yourself miss one single chance to shave a pirate, friends ... never, ever miss one single chance to shave a pirate.
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