Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Last week I stumbled into a little hipster coffee shop on a long layover in Oklahoma City. They had a bourbon maple pecan latte that caught my attention.
I typically load up my coffee at home with a lot. Creatine, resveratrol, NMN, collagen, cinnamon, and turmeric all make a regular appearance. Even still, there was a lot going on in that latte. To include chopped pecans for an oddly satisfying chewy sensation I was surprised to enjoy in my mid morning cup.
Between the heavy history of linguistics research and the multitude of flavors in the latte I was surprised when my attention was drawn to the window outside.
It was a windy day in Oklahoma. I had spent the morning running along the brick town canal and then the Oklahoma River. It was mostly quiet and just a few other walkers or cyclists were out. There was however, a small army of landscapers weilding leaf blowers.
It seemed like an exercise in futility, but there they were, it seemed a new team around every corner, battling the wind with their air cannons trying to corral the rogue leaves.
This was especially apparent outside the coffee shop window, where the small army and their mini jet engines could be heard through my ear plugs and over the hipster coffee shop music as I tried to work.
I finally looked up and saw this silly tree across the street. A lone act of defiance in an otherwise concrete jungle landscape. From my seat at the window it was hard to tell where the roots even had access to any dirt.
This was the source of all those rogue leaves. Which drew the army of jet blasting landscapers. Which in turn was providing a myriad of distractions from my project at hand. This tree obviously didn’t belong here.
Or did it.
I am very grateful for these long layovers. Away from the inevitable busyness of a flying day or life as a father and husband, I am able to have such trivial contemplations.
The tree certainly didn’t fit with the rest of the scene, and my initial reaction was that it didn’t belong. The landscaping team certainly shared my belief, fighting their uphill and upwind battle illy equiped against the leaves.
What if I got it wrong? What is the tree did belong there. What if it belonged there more than the sidewalk, or the condo, or the hipster coffee shop? Who gets to decide what belongs and what does not.
I smiled to myself as I chewed on my latte, suddenly much more appreciative of the distraction from my project. My initial reaction was unnecessarily hostile and misguided. As quickly as it came though, a competing idea bubbled up.
I thought about my boys, growing up in a world that seems to be increasingly divided and polarized. A world with spaces were belonging can be artificially defined.
I’m not sure they are old enough, and even when they are they might not fully appreciate this story. It is after all one trivial contemplation among many that I hope to bequeath them.
Maybe you had to be there. Trying to block out the hipster music and the leaf blowers, oddly chewing on pecans in a latte, reading esoteric linguistic research to really appreciate that renegade growing tall out of the concrete and peppering passers-by with it’s foliage.
But, I think it’s lesson is a valuable one. Our first reaction to who or what belongs, is not always the right one. There is beauty to be found especially in outliers, that might not seem to belong.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.