People in Your Basket

One of the sayings of the interim pastor at our church is about “people in your basket.” In fact, yesterday he said, “If you don’t remember anything else I said, remember this…”

As an aside, that reminds me of a story Lisa told me once about the professor who told her class “If you don’t remember anything else I said, remember this…” To this day, she admits that’s all she could remember!

I think we’ll do better with the basket quote. At least I hope so.

His basic theory is that throughout your life, you will encounter many people. The ones you have frequent interaction with are the ones in your basket.

The pleasant interactions are kind of like ‘the friends’ in the basket in Holly’s bedroom. Warm and fuzzy.

I was reflecting about the basket theory over the weekend and remembering numerous stories from friends and family. Unfortunately, these stories are neither warm nor fuzzy.

So many of them refer to the difficult people in their basket(s).

• Female friends whose husbands left them high and dry (but still provided challenges even though the marriage ended).
• Children who encountered bullies at school.
• Co-workers who are mean or angry.
• Difficult neighbors, friends, or family members.

Really, the list is endless.

The reality, sad to say, is that these challenging ‘people in our basket’ are going to stay.  It’s a part of our daily life. I think that’s his point, anyway.

How about this for an example?
What do you do when someone you have ‘in the basket’ is focused on advancing an agenda. They push and push and bully their way through until they get others to cave in. For them, it’s all about the ‘w.’

Sadly, I met many such fellahs during my years in youth baseball.

Or here’s another.
What do you do when there is someone around who is content to let others do all the work while they reap the benefits?

A third example.
One-uppers. No matter what you’ve done, they’ve always done more; no matter what you’ve got, their’s is newer, bigger, better.

With regard to those scenarios: I stand up to bullies; with the “Keep up with the Jones” crowd, I tune them out.

Your approach might be different; quite likely it is better.

I’m fascinated by the notion that we have these people in our lives – these ‘people in the basket.’ We Presbys would say it is meant to be – like the life-long best friend I met because of the school lunchbox I carried. We still talk every day.

Then there’s the guy on the high school newspaper staff who didn’t have a bunch to eat lunch with…so we had him join us…all those years ago.

And we’re still friends.

Then there was the story about the pretty girl sitting in the journalism class and the guy who worked up his courage to go talk to her. That one worked out okay, didn’t it?

But, it’s probably a story for another time.

Those are some of the good people in the basket. Their mere presence in the basket brings good things.

The difficult ones, well, they just seem to find their way into the basket. They provide us challenges and, well, some opportunities also. At the end of the day, it’s how we chose to deal them that is the key.

jg

Originally posted 2/24/2014