At My Inconvenience, Please.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

"As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision." (Helen Keller, American author, activist, lecturer)

It's all about your convenience.

"Convenience" has always been the yardstick by which we measure the utility of technology, and it's never been more personal than now.  Your iPad, your smart phone, the ads popping up on your Facebook page...they all cater to you.  Instant messaging, texting, internet browser preferences, and Microsoft Outlook's crazy integrated email/calendar/address book/to-do list that will spawn an artificial intelligence to take over the world any day now...it's all designed to make your life, your day, your agenda more convenient.

Thank heavens that sincere, interpersonal relationships are very inconvenient things!

What a blessing to have special people in our lives who seem uncannily adept at spoiling our carefully laid, self-centered life plans.  People who help us rise above our personalized, profiled, bookmarked, virtual lives by giving us opportunities to serve, to listen, to nurture, to encourage, to love.  Dear people like the husband who upends your afternoon plans with a surprise lunch visit.  The daughter who calls at odd hours really "needing to talk."  The father with the nerve to have a birthday in only two days (time to mail that card!).  

In our frenetic, mile-a-minute society, so much of the wonderful technology that molds the day-to-day rhythm of our lives seems designed to reinforce our self-centric world view while shoe-horning precious relationships into convenient corners of our consciousness.  Return a phone call?  Respond to a text?  Comment on a blog post?  Email a picture?  Reply to an E-vite (or not...)?  At your convenience, please.

With so much revolving around our convenience, we require less and less thought to maintain our increasingly tech-deep and face-time-shallow relationships.  And the lousy thing about growing thoughtless is that, by it's own definition, we don't think about it; we don't have "eyes to see." (Insert frantic warning from your Superego ["It's a trap!"] against background of your Id's diabolical laughter). 

But when we remember to put people ahead of plans, life gets far more colorful than the monochromatic doldrums of self-centered scheduling.  

Suddenly we find ourselves madly typing a college paper into the wee hours of the morning because we interrupted our schedule to support a girlfriend's dinner party.  

We set aside a lengthy to-do list to fix a tuna fish sandwich for an unexpected, but always welcome neighbor.  

We forgo the chance to tour yet another historical site (how many sepulchers are in this crazy country?!) to buy a small keepsake for a loved one at home. 

We sacrifice an hour of sleep to talk with a child on the phone...just because. 

And when our real-time, real-world, real-person relationships begin to take precedence, life becomes a little less convenient and a little more...worth living.

And a lot more wonderful!