Despite Everything

I have watched one too many movies on airplanes lately. They help to pass the time on business trips. 

In one overdramatic tearjerker called The Choice, a character quoted their grandmother. Grandma said that when you first meet a new partner, you like them because of certain things about them. Later on, though, you love them despite those or other things about them.

Sounds about right!

A friend of mine told me she did not fall in love with her husband because of how he dresses, for example. She loves him despite how he dresses.

I fell for my boyfriend almost 14 years ago. 

When we first met, I appreciated how active he was—he was a tennis player, an ice hockey official, and a hiker. He was smart, ambitious, and a high achiever. And he gave his time and resources to good causes. Those are all the things that made me like him.

What makes me love him today? 

This weekend, we had some friends coming over, and he told me he was going to clean some things up in the yard. We were going to have a fire in the fire pit, so I thought this meant he would get the patio in order, grab a table for food, maybe bring up some extra chairs.

But no. 

He meant he was going to go weed whack.

Weed whack? 

The patio needed organizing, the floors inside needed to be vacuumed and washed, the kitchen needed tidying, and food needed prepping. But his top priority was the weeds along the driveway and lawn that needed-a-trimming.

It made me laugh. 

My first instinct was to get ready for the people. To grab chairs from the basement so they would have a place to sit. To clean out the fridge so there would be a place for the food they were bringing. To prep appetizers so there would be yumminess for them to eat.

His first instinct was to clean up the landscape. To smooth out the edges. To prepare the land.

To an untrained eye, it might seem he was not thinking about the people. 

But he was caring for the context. The container that would be holding us. The ecosystem we would be sitting in.

When I was younger, I probably would have gotten upset in that moment. I would have thought he had his priorities screwed up. I might have even been snarky. But this time, as he disappeared down the long driveway, I thought, “He’s weed whacking the yard. And I am weed whacking the house.”

I could do the other things. It was all good.

It’s useful to notice in these moments where our instincts go first. They reveal a lot about our values and who we are. They show how we think about our role in the world.

My boyfriend cares about the planet. He takes great joy in cutting down dead trees and battling the bittersweet in our yard that is consuming the saplings. He might as well be a farmer out there tilling the soil.

This is why I love him. Despite the fact that it doesn't always seem he's thinking about the people first.

I think this tenet applies to work too. Sometimes, we like a job at first because of how it uses our brain or challenges us. Later on, we may love that same job...despite painful tasks we now struggle with.

I like to write, for example—it is fun to string together words in new ways. But I love writing despite the fact that I can never get it perfect. It's not math. I can never be done, or get it exactly right.

Who or what in your world do you love despite certain things about it?

And how does taking all of this in help you to grow?