Never go back the way you came

It was a cool night in Cleveland, and the greenway was beginning to darken rapidly as the sun set on the western horizon. The electric lights left a haze in the air as a friend of mine and I stumbled upon a new section of the paths that neither of us had ever explored. 


We walked for a little while, simply taking in the amusements to be found along the new path (various exercise stations that made for great fun and hilarious photos). As we started to head back to our car, we spotted one more path we'd never taken and decided to see where it led. 


We emerged on one of the main streets in Cleveland, just a few blocks from the parking lot from which we had started. It was a much shorter walk than the meandering paths we'd left behind, so we started walking down the bustling street. 


As we started walking, we talked about what we'd learned about the greenway that night, and our conversation arrived at an interesting consensus that I've thought about a lot since that night: Never go back the way that you came.

This could be physically taking another path or it could be as simple as adopting a new attitude about something or someone based on your experiences. 


American psychologist and philosopher William James described human consciousness as a river, something that is always flowing and moving and changing. And as an equally wise Disney philosopher once said, "What I love most about rivers is you can't step in the same river twice. The water's always changing, always flowing." (Pocahontas taught me so much when I was little, but that's another post entirely.) 


Every experience we have, every thought that comes across our mind, alters us in some way. It may be ever so slight, but it leaves its mark like a footstep in the forest on a dry, hot summer day. Those moments of slight change are what I believe direct us in life. They work together to make us who we are meant to be.


I learned about William James' theory of self in the last psychology class I took to complete my degree at Lee University. The class was aptly named Psychology of Self. When I went in, I had no clue what that even meant, and I struggled through most of that class, though that was also greatly due to the fact that the professor was the most challenging in the department, and for that I am truly thankful. He challenged us to not only study the theories of self presented by others throughout history, but to formulate our own concept of self. Right or wrong didn't matter; it just had to be well-presented and rooted in sound principles. I took William James' idea of a river constantly changing and added in an important question: Changing to what?

Now, allow me to preface the rest of this post with a disclaimer: I know I am not being original in this and that others have said it before. I am a great believer in the idea that there really is no such thing as an original thought. As King Solomon put it in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun." But sometimes it takes making a thought your own to fully grasp the fullness of it.

The theory of self that I presented to my classmates was relatively simple, but working through it for myself let me see everyone around me in a different light. That is why I'd like to share part of it with you before going back to the original thought of this post. My theory of self was simply called the Imago Dei theory.

We are all made in the image of God (imago Dei). And yet how can we all be made in the image of one being and still be so different and diverse? I've always had an idea of God as a gemstone, multifaceted and complex to the point where one cannot physically gaze upon the stone in its entirety without constantly moving for new perspective. 

One cannot simply look in one place and find the entirety of God. He is in everything and everyone. And I believe that each person sees and reflects a different facet of him. I also believe that we spend our lives seeking to know the Creator who so fearfully and wonderfully made us. We seek the piece of God reflected in others to add to our own understanding of him. We cannot find him on our own. We need each other.

Sometimes in our interactions with other people, we find pieces that are not a reflection of God. They hurt. They leave scars. They discourage us from our quest to find more of God by convincing us that it hurts too much to get too close. For me, that's even more of a reason to continue searching and to learn to find God's reflection in everything and everyone. Which brings me back to never going back the same way you came.


Every encounter in life holds something from which we can learn. We can choose to find the reflection of God in the situation or we can dwell on the surface of the experience. 


Many people have told me that I forgive too easily or that I am way too positive about negative situations. I do get hurt a lot by being so open, but I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything in the world. Each one has taught me about God in such a way that I would not have learned had I not interacted with the people who came into my path and walked a while with me. 


It's a beautiful thing to read the Bible, then find living examples of it in the people around you. Perhaps one day I'll write about a few of those specific examples, but this post is getting long enough without all the detail (feel free to email me about it someday if you want to hear some of my stories).


Sometimes it's not until long after the fact that I find the piece of God in a situation that I was meant to see, but I always know that it's there. And that gives me hope. With every interaction, I will never be the same. As I've heard countless times from people in various churches: "Thank God I'm not who I used to be, but I'm not yet who I'm supposed to be, either."

Here's to growing closer to God in every situation and never going back the way you came.