I love you Atlanta
The other day I was trying to remember what happened last weekend. I wanted to reflect and examine what I learned in the past few days but I just couldn’t seem to recall anything that happened.
I blame part of it on what I call “tour amnesia”. When you’re on tour it’s very difficult to remember all the things that happen each day for one reason or another. Which is why it’s important to keep a journal, a helpful tip I learned from a fellow nomad. Also on tour each days feels like a month, so I wasn’t surprised that I already forgot about the events that transpired. So I decided to ask my teammate Justin about what happened.
I was so surprised to hear about all the things that happened. I couldn’t help but laugh because our weekend was so ridiculous and I was even more shocked at how I could forget them already. I’m either very forgetful or it just takes a whole lot to impress me.
After I was done laughing I started to look into my weekend. As I replayed each event in my mind I couldn’t get over the emotions and thoughts that filled my head as I experienced each moment. One thing that I remembered clearly was the tension that I felt in my heart throughout the weekend because what happened last weekend was very unusual.
Throughout my weekend I met people who were very different than me. In fact they were all very different from each other. After a screening on Friday night, as Justin and I were packing up our van, a man named James Warren Wood approached us asking to score some free t-shirts. When I finished telling him that we needed those shirts to help North Korean refugees he decided to take some time to educate Justin and me about life. His advice was, “don’t mess up your life”, Justin and I assured him that we didn’t plan on doing so. James Warren Wood is definitely a character I won’t forget. I respect him even though there was much that I couldn’t understand from his talk simply because we come from such different places.
Later that weekend we decided to visit Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Piedmont Park is one of the most beautiful parks that I ever visited. I strongly recommend any traveler or tourist to go here to get some rest and relaxation. However, at Piedmont Park on Sunday afternoons there is a corner where a community congregates to exhibit their various talents and hobbies. These talents include practicing their bullwhip skills, hula hoop skills, poi skills, yoga, and building human towers. It’s fun to watch.
What I learned this weekend is that I have a difficult time accepting and appreciating people who are “too different” from me. As I watched a group of five practice snapping a bullwhip that Sunday afternoon I felt myself getting filled with contempt toward them simply because they were doing something different that I thought was “uncool”. I found that there are some different people who I think are “cool” and “awesome”, but others who I think are “uncool” and “weird”. Who am I to evaluate and rank them on such an arbitrary scale? Who am I to decide their worth and value based on appearances?
I want to learn how to appropriately love, accept, and respect people regardless of whether or not my culture or I deem them “lovely” or “unlovely”. Maybe then I would be willing to extend friendship and compassion to them and from there I’ll be able to love them in fuller way. As I look back on my weekend now, I regret not taking the opportunity to try to get to know the people who I thought were so “weird” and “awkward”.
So perhaps next time at Piedmont Park, instead of thinking something rude about the bullwhippers, I should introduce myself and ask if I could give the bullwhip a shot, or rather a snap.
Chris Onesto
