The DVD Player...a metaphor for life at the moment

So...as many of you know I have recently returned to Canada. One of the things we brought along was a DVD player that we bought. The reason we brought it with us was that it played all the DVDs that we owned.

It was an interesting revelation to us, when our laptop DVD player stopped working while we were in England, to learn that a device intended to be carried with one around the world had a version code restriction. That meant that the DVDs we had purchased in Canada and the UK and Asia could not be played on the same machine.

Think about the logic of that...a laptop...a computer made for the express purpose of being able to be carried with you wherever you roam...had geographic restrictions. Although, the manufacturers cottoned on the fact that different continents have different voltages so most laptops are made to accept from 110 to 220 V. The thought process did not extend to dealing with version codes on DVDs.

That all leads up to our DVD player. We have one that plays all the DVDs that we bought. And we have legitimately bought DVDs on three continents...let's not even get into the fact that in many places it would have been easier and cheaper to buy pirated DVDs. These are not pirated DVDs, just DVDs bought in several different geographic locations...and they all work on this one player. So we packed it up and brought it here only to discover that it wasn't as simple as connecting it to a television and popping in one of our DVDS. Apparently there is some issue with the signal sent from a DVD Player from one continent being received by a television from another.

I guess that's a little illustration on the hurdles of cross-cultural communication. When we say one thing we don't really know if the 'signal' is being 'received'. It's only with interaction...verbal responses, body language, facial expressions...that we then 'get' whether the signal has been understood. I think that I am seeing that when you modify your signal...it's not so simple as to return to the previous wavelength you were operating on...

So our DVD player is a useful tool...however in this context currently unusable... In someways that's what we feel like here...the life we lived overseas has been useful for growth and maturity...but it doesn't feel all that usable here. What is the next step for moving forward?

...time...maybe? Someone recently thought that since we took seven years to get to where we are, maybe we need to give ourselves seven years to get back to where we were. A simple answer and yet comforting to be afforded that much grace to work through our transition.

However, I think both B and I agree that we don't want to go back to who we were. We are hopefully older and wiser than we were a decade ago. We have benefited from input of a wide range of friends...with their worldviews, perspectives and experiences impinging on ours and each of us shifting the others 'signal'.

In all this I am looking for an easy way to make my 'signal' readable by all the people I come in contact with. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of building community and understanding. There is an approach to differences that is tantamount to putting one's head in the sand...it's not working, toss it and buy a new one... Which is a plausible solution to our current DVD/TV compatibility problem, but not such a gracious attitude when the 'signal' being sent is coming from another living, breathing, feeling human being. I want to advocate for a sincere way to be a global citizen, where we forget to call our life experience normal, but simply and uniquely our experience and in that place remember that the other before us has a life experience that is simply different than ours.

In the end I guess this is part of why I continue to try to let go of expectations. I have found them to be a burden that leads me to disappointment and then discontentment. When the frequency is not communicating what it should I need to adjust the signal and try again...or maybe I am still at the place of looking for how to make that adjustment?

In the midst of trying to communicate with the outside there is a struggle to reconcile on the inside. Of course, the DVD player doesn't know that it is useless here...but maybe we are feeling like we are... Not towards our friends and family, but in the place of looking for a space that we fit, that place that we know we are walking out our vocation, that place where the day's work is satisfying, not overwhelming, not draining...oh, for life to be flowing from a place of bounty instead of deficit.