the element of everything

As my life evolves into the intricate narrative that it has become, my goal for this writing outlet is to take time and dissect some of the smaller stories that happen within my metanarrative –yes, I just wanted to say metanarrative.

My narrative immediately includes Becca, my wife, and Cavender, our daughter. A little further out are our close friends, our extended family (which used to be our respective immediate family). A little further than that are our co-workers, profs, and fellow students here at Asbury. After that are the people I encounter either regularly or irregularly every day.

In The Search to Belong, Joseph Meyers discusses Edward T. Halls’ theories about four relational spaces: public, social, personal, and intimate. Beginning with public, each space progressively gets closer to the essence of who we are.

We are better off when we have a healthy balance of relationships within each space; fewer as we get closer to the essence of who we are.

We are better off when we share our lives in common with others; when we have relationships with others; when we contribute to their story and are affected by theirs.

That’s what this is all about. The picture up top is the best snapshot I could find to describe the name of this experiment. The green is me, the blue is Becca, and the pink is Cavender. We are just teeth on a cog that are acting coherently with 6 billion other cogs on this planet. I know, that sounds really crass…because it is. I certainly love my family and others much more than the shiny cast alloy portrays. But as I heard from my prof in this past J-term, “that’s a good analogy, but no analogy has four strong legs to stand on.” True. So don’t take the analogy too literally because I don’t.

So here goes. I hope you enjoy this time with me. Maybe you’ll find me interesting and maybe you won’t. But either way you’ll at least be in my public space and hopefully you’ll let me know what you think so you can contribute to my narrative the way I’ve contributed to yours.