TJ Hirst

Social (synonyms: companionable, convivial, gregarious, sociable) The central meaning of these adjectives is inclined to, marked by, or passed in friendly companionship with others.

My husband is an introvert, and I am an extrovert. My children line up in different ways around us. My teenage daughter, who is more like her dad, and I have a new opportunity to interact in social settings with her beyond our family, and it causes me to ask myself about sociality and personality. A friend confessed that she and her husband are both introverts, which surprised me because she initiates conversations and keeps them going with friends and strangers alike. But she said they worked really hard at being extroverts.

Neither being an introvert nor an extrovert is preferable. But we all need to interact in the communities we circulate. Social skills are the way we do that successfully.

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Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I am reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom for the July Reading Challenge. The main character, Eddie, learns from the first person he meets in heaven, the Blue Man, that all the people he will meet in heaven will teach him “that there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from a wind. . . The human spirit knows deep down that all lives intersect.”

His words fill me with curiosity about the people outside my circle of friends, families and associates with whom my life might intersect—clerks in stores I frequent, the regulars who exercise at the same time as I do, the parents of students in my children’s grade at school who attend the same concerts and school functions. Sometimes these strangers’ faces seem even more familiar to me than relatives who live across the country.

The Blue Man tells Eddie that “the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.” I do feel less alone when I think not only about the people who intersect my life but how those intersections impact me. Even more, my vision becomes less self-centered. So, this week I will . . .

Observe the people who intersect my life, be aware of them and consider their influence.

Do you want to try it with me?

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

The start of summer signals the season of going places. Summer vacations, summer lessons and summer activities stir our sense of adventure beyond the routine. The adventures that start with summer weddings, summer moves and summer graduations promise new opportunities when we reach our destination.

I adore the discovery of new paths leading to unexplored places. Going anywhere opens my eyes. Going somewhere changes my vision. Except, I am not going anywhere right now. I am not moving or vacationing or starting anything new, even though everyone around me seems to be.

My close friend, on the other hand, is moving across the country. She lived more than 80 miles from me here in Minnesota, but we connected despite the distance. My children and I drove to her home and spent several hours cleaning with her on moving day. Another friend was there who commented that it surprised her that I would “drive so far just to clean a bathroom and clean out a fridge.”

I told her I would go anywhere to help, but I would especially do that for this friend. She and I grew close over the years of an important responsibility we shared, but more than that, our hearts connected one-to-one.

Last year that responsibility ended, and she went on in that place without me. The purpose and passion we shared became just hers. My state of rest, though needed, left my vision and goals without momentum to move forward or a desire to look back. My communication circles shrunk. Loss and loneliness filled my place while she and others continued going. For them, nothing had changed. For me, everything had.

I wish I could say that it eventually was the same again for me and between us. Yet, while shared places bring shared experiences, ultimately, different places bring different experiences. This week, though, we sat together in her empty house, remembering—and feeling—that friendship that still binds us.

As I passed her loaded moving van on my way out, my thoughts did not linger longingly or enviously upon the adventures ahead of her. Ironically, stopping in my own place took me to the place I wanted to go. That inaction, over time, refined me to see every day of the glorious world right around me.

This is an entry in the June Write-Away Contest at Scribbit.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

When I committed to the May Reading Challenge to read to or with someone, I wanted an unexpected opportunity to present itself. I waited. I trusted that such an opportunity would come and I would see it. I waited. I wondered. I made an alternate plan to pursue something else. But close to my deadline, it happened!

First, some background. Last year I read the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. When my daughter turned 14, I encouraged her to expand her reading genres and try these. Yet, I knew they were a little more mature and wanted to talk about some of the scenes and themes with her.

After she finished Twilight in two days, she started New Moon. She admitted they were better than she expected. Although I wanted her to slow down and let us talk about them, she is quick and not a big talker. Me—I’m a BIG talker; yet, she was plowing through them and wasn’t pausing for communication.

Until . . .

Sickness sidelined her unexpectedly on a school day, and I saw the opportunity. I rearranged my plans for the day. We settled into the couches where I read a chapter of New Moon to her. While she was a bit frustrated by the slower pace of listening, it did open her up to discuss the series. We engaged in some interesting conversation. And that was my goal!

Even as she returned to her book alone, I picked up my book, Watership Down, and we read for a couple of hours on the couch together. Interestingly, that opportunity opened my thinking about a plan to extend this challenge throughout the summer.

I thought my days of reading aloud with my children were over. They are becoming increasingly more independent and mature. But this summer may just be our window of opportunity to try one more read-aloud book together. And after finishing Watership Down, that might just be the right one. Or do you have some suggestions for a read-aloud with ages ranging from 9-14?

Did you read to or with someone this month? What benefits do you see from reading together? Tell me about it in the comments below or send me a link to your own post about it.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

In the middle of my perennial garden bed, I sat between the weeds and the flowers, not knowing the difference. Sometimes perennials or wildflowers that aren’t in bloom can look a lot like weeds. I was a young mom and a young gardener inheriting a garden from previous owners.

Meanwhile, my neighbor across the street cleared and prepared her beds for an herb and vegetable garden. I craved turning over my own soil to plant new seeds or plants. I ripped at the plants that looked like weeds to me. Yet, as I proceeded, I felt a quiet urge to wait patiently and watch the garden, to not even pull the weeds. My nurturing instinct was louder than my impulsiveness, and I backed off the garden bed.

In that everyday gardening experience I became not only a more patient gardener but a more patient mother, working slowly and carefully in both realms.

My everyday realms are ordinary, but they are a microcosm to larger realms. Considering and connecting, comparing and contrasting everyday experiences to each other and to the larger world reveals truth. The grass is always greener somewhere else until light illuminates our own.

This is the 100^th post at tjhirst.com. In celebration, I reveal a new look and a new tagline, Illuminate Everyday. My husband, Paul, created this original web design to reflect my writing goals.

To illuminate is to provide or brighten with light, to make understandable, clarify, to enlighten. I am still seeking and finding what inspires, but the process to seek and find creative, intellectual or spiritual inspiration is not an anxious perusal of all the available resources the world over.

Inspiration comes when I illuminate the everyday people, circumstances and situations in my own realm and consider the truths that exist right around me. My writing is a creative process that “elevates the everyday rather than denigrates it,” as my husband says. My goal on this website is to share that process and what I discover.