Radically Happy

I am back outside Chicago, probably visiting family in Northern Illinois.

To my surprise, I have to attend a conference my last day. I am trying to decide whether to take a train there, and then the airport. The place is closer to the Indiana border than O’Hare, but I struggle to zoom in and out enough to find the absolute distance.

The hotel room is nice, but poorly lit.
Worse, they don’t have good boundaries. In the morning, when getting ready to leave, I keep ending up in other people’s rooms while looking for the light switch.

I finally make it out to the lobby. I see some people I know. They recognize me and start talking about our flight. I heave a sigh of relief, that someone actually knows what I’m supposed to do.

But then they ask me which product I’m selling. Then I realize they do know me, but somehow got the impression I work for the same vendor they do, which is why they natively assumed I was on their flight.

It’s not an implausible assumption, given the contexts where we met. But I speculate that it must be a very large company if it is easy to lose track of who works there.

Then I wake up.

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Reflections

• Overstepping boundaries while trying to see clearly is a good metaphor for how I treat my friends.
• People who naively assume I am going where they are going, just because they see me around, is kind of how I feel at church.
• The bit about clearly seeing the relative distances, but being unable to find the perspective to see absolutes, feels significant. But I have no idea why. Absolute truth?