There seems to be a theme emerging from this trip. There are places I had little to no interaction with in the past and had it set in my mind that they were total worthless duds. Take the entire state of New Mexico, for example. It was always the red head step sibling of Arizona. Why would you even bother if you could just live there? The same was true with a few places in Colorado. Now that I look back, I probably drove through these places on the major interstate, not even bothering to try. Yet it was already set in my mind.
On this trip, I have been making it a point when taking the interstate to get off and find cool things, and I have been blown away. There is some amazing architecture and culture in Santa Fe that blows Arizona out of the water. What Tucson and Flagstaff are trying to do, Santa Fe does and does it well. Wow, I took 10 minutes to give something a second chance and look what happened. Right now I am in Pueblo, Colorado. I had only been here once to visit people and thought that their little side of town, which is very nice, was the whole thing. Now I am sitting on this amazing river walk that I had no idea existed, neither the river nor the walk.
Now I feel like I must examine what areas of my life I am living in a bubble. What places do I take one experience, good or bad, and apply it to every scenario and every person involved. At work? School? Groups of people? Parts of town? Entire towns? I can't imagine what I am missing out on, and more importantly, how many people I am pissing off by grouping them with something they definitely are not. Do any of us like being generalized? As hard as it may be, and this can be very hard in my line of work, I feel challenged to take each situation on a case by case basis and love it like Jesus did.
I'd definitely appreciate anybody calling me out if they see me doing this. It's going to take work Sure it can be passed off as fun or, "there are stereotypes for a reason"… Really… the answer should be heck NO!
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