Own Your Role

I simple thought came to me this morning that kept developing until I actually learned something profound from it.

We all view life in first-person narrative. No matter how close we are to people, we still view them through our eyes and understand them depending on how they interact with OUR life.  Like, you might be friendly with the elderly couple across the street and you like them just fine and are happy they're there.  They're just a small part in the grand scheme of your life, but a pleasant one.  In the same way, you might be that nice, young couple who moved in across from the elderly couple and they like you just fine and are happy you're there, but you're just an even smaller part in their longer lives full of friends and acquaintances.  I think we tend to limit people to what they mean to us, for good or ill, based soley on our experiences with them as they appear in our lives.

Let's think of it as a movie.  If your live is a movie, you're the star.  Your spouse and immediate family would be your co-stars along with your best friends.  The next tier down would be your coworkers, folks you talk to at church, and moderately close friends.  Way down past that is the grocery check-out clerk who added up your mangos last week and the young girl who served you a Dr. Pepper at the McDonald's drive through.  These people have varying degrees of importance to you based on their role in your movie.

Swap it around now.  You have a role of varying importances in the movies of EVERYONE you will come into contact today.  You'll be quite important (hopefully) to your spouse, less so to your coworkers, less so the girl at McDonalds.  They all have their own movie playing and you have a role in it, just like they do yours.

Here' the application.  What do you want your role to be?  Do you want to be the loving, supportive spouse, or the argumentative, selfish (antagonist) spouse in your wife/husband's movie?  Do you want to be the helpful, true friend or the gossipy backstabber?  Do you want to be the thoughtful, mannerly customer who brightens the clerk's day or the self-absorbed jerk of a customer who makes the clerk's life a living hell?

Everyone you meet today has their own movie playing and you get to choose your role.  Whether you're a Christian or are just trying to be a decent human, please choose the higher path.  Please be the one who makes their movie better.  If everyone realized that everyone else has their own movie and are not just actors in ours, we would all be much happier.

God bless you and all the movies you star in today.