air planes, kettle bells, and a bit of african culture.

On monday I had a chance to talk to some really neat people. During one of the kettle bell classes I was taking, we all decided that to make time faster, we should talk about our "life stories" so we went around the room and said a little bit about ourselves and some experiences.

One woman in particular spent 20 years or so of her life in africa. Her and her husband spent time flying missionaries into places that were hard to reach. She told mant stories of things that happened but there were a few that really caught my attention. She was telling us that above all people are the most important. You would never answer the phone say hello and get straight to the point, you would ask the person how they are doing, how they slept, and almost get to know them a bit. When you would pass someone by on the street you would ask What they have done but rather If they have spent their day well. It isnt uncommon to spent a half an hour having a genuine conversation with someone. And just ingoring someone was just plain unheard of, and considered very rude. She said that you were very friendly with everyone, and for the most part, everyone helped everyone out. She had also told us that elders were very respected, no questions asked. It wasnt because of anything other than younger people simply havent had the opportunity to learn enough yet, and it wasnt uncommon for someone to ask to speak to an elder. She gave many example of when that would happen to her. for instance, many of the americans who lived there would help employ locals. There was a woman that would come to their home to clean that was significantly older than her. She would give the woman fairly simple tasks, and more than anything just have her around. She told us that often times other elders would say to the woman that they felt bad for her. Not because she had a job cleaning their home, but because she worked for a 30 year old woman, who simply hadnt had enough time on the earth yet to learn enough.

The reason I thought I should share this is because there is something that we can learn from it. Take time to legitimately talk to some one and value them. A life is measured by if it was well spent, not how much we have accomplished in a day. And respect your elders, take time to learn from them. Take in their experiences, dont take for granted all the things that we can learn from them. I know that it sounds kind of crazy to think that maybe the young should take time to learn from the old. We are conditioned to think that we are young and we have great ideas, and everyone should take us seriously, which may be true. we just simply havent been here as long, may not have seen as much, and didnt live during the time they did.

I really hope that I can hear more from her about her time spent traveling.

Hope youre having a great day!