“My first girlfriend. For exactly a week… which luckily included my 14th birthday”
One woman I had not seen since high school was my very first girlfriend. I had heard about her at the 40th, and the 45th, and was hoping she was going to be at the 50th. As I was taking pictures at the opening luncheon, there she was – looking about the same honestly. Why is it the women generally don’t age, while us guys… well…
We traded a few pleasantries, and then when we were threatened to stop talking and sit down for lunch, there was a seat next to her. I took it… and started to hear about her life since high school. She is now a pastor and a therapist and it was great to hear her story… even with the heartache.
…the leader who is too busy to wonder…
You run hard. You have a plan for the quarter, a plan for the year, and a plan for the next role. What you do not have is an hour on your own where nothing is asked of you, and so you never get to the question that sits underneath all the plans: when the people closest to you tell your story, which parts will they tell? At work it will be the projects, for a while. At home it will be something smaller and much harder to fake: whether you were there, whether you listened, and whether you noticed when it hurt.
…the guitar player who disappeared into the music…
David Evans was born in Barking, England, on August 8, 1961, to Welsh parents, and grew up in Dublin. He and his older brother Dik were in Larry Mullen Jr’s kitchen on the day U2 began, and the world came to know him as the Edge. In the fall of 1990 U2 went to Berlin to make Achtung Baby, and the band nearly came apart over which direction to take. In the middle of it, the Edge and his wife separated. He said later that he was disappearing into the music for a different reason, that it was a refuge, and that he was running away. Bono remembered how hard it was on the whole band, calling it the first cracks on the beautiful porcelain jug.
Some of the Legacy you leave is the part you never say out loud.
…a song Bono wrote for someone else…
Bono wrote Love Is Blindness on piano during the Rattle and Hum sessions, meaning to give it to Nina Simone. After the band played it together, they kept it. It became the last song on Achtung Baby, released in November 1991, and it closed or nearly closed 154 of the 157 shows on the Zoo TV tour. Bono said that when the Edge recorded the solo at the end, he played until the strings fell off, and you can hear them snapping in the recording. On the inside, Bono said, he was in tears. On the outside he was just raging.
The Edge never had to explain that solo. Everyone who has heard it knows what it is about: a Legacy that outruns the words.
…what I wondered after the reunion…
I stayed with a couple that were active Christians like I am, and we spent every morning working through some scriptures. What I noticed at this Reunion in particular, after 50 years, many of my closet friends were those I made in and through the Church. There are a lot of things to say bad about “Church” but in every conversation, there was a through line of God’s hand in what had happened. In this girlfriends experience, loaded with heartache that made me want to scream, she had handled all of it with grace and a calmness that was supernatural. Her smile hadn’t changed at all – some of the lines on the face were hard won, but the same spirit I knew from 1976 was still there. Now serving small rural churches of “mostly men” I can see how they would be well served by her quiet but solid standing.
…an hour with nothing in your ears…
Most of us never give ourselves the quiet to wonder. We fill the drive with a podcast and the walk with a call. The question about what we are leaving behind needs room, and it will not come while something else is talking. Give it 30 minutes and it usually shows up in the last 10, after the to-do list has run out of things to say.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Take a walk alone, with no phone and no podcast, and ask what the people closest to you will remember.
If you come back from that walk with more questions than answers, that is a good sign, and a good time to wonder out loud with someone. Schedule time with me here.
Walk it alone, and see what you find beyond the… Love Is Blindness
