I'm thinking of beginning a new personal tradition. While on a trip recently, I picked up some handicrafts for friends. On a lark, I snapped a photo of one of the craftsmen at work and gave the photograph to a friend along with the gift.
All of a sudden, it wasn't just an impersonal trinket from another country. It had a face behind it. A human connection was made.
I may be doing that more and more.
So many relationships in the world seem to be designed to be impersonal relationships. A passing word to the hot dog vendor, a comment to a ticket taker, a quick aside spoken to a busboy are seldom personal comments. They are simply commands or requests — no matter how pleasant.
Making those exchanges personal wouldn't take much work.
I once interviewed a woman whose job was to have dozens of impersonal relationships a day. She was paid to say titillating things to men over the phone — what author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once called tawdry "emergency love affairs."
In the interview, she spent a good deal of time justifying what she did. She said she felt if men talked to her about promiscuous things, maybe they wouldn't go out and do them. In other words, she felt she was saving families.
She said the pay was good, her husband didn't mind and by working from her home at night she could spend the day at the park with kids.
But behind her words, all I could hear was the sound of a world-weary voice that had been beaten down by hundreds of impersonal telephone calls. And after all those conversations, she was still starving for some kind of true connection.
She said nobody ever called her just to chat. She said I should call if I ever wanted to discuss family, religion, friends, football — anything with a true human side to it.
In the end, she was just another lonely girl, waiting by the telephone.
The saddest people in the world are often the ones who have a lot of contact with other people but never connect.
After talking with her, I made a note to try to be less impersonal with people, to connect more. Yet, as I say that, I realize there's a limit to what a person can personalize. For instance, I can't imagine myself developing a personal connection with anyone who had purposely injured a member of my family, or someone who had committed murder.
I find it hard to picture me starting any kind of personal relationship with someone who sexually abuses young children.
Still, a haunting thought does linger: If God is willing to share his heart with such people, who am I to deny them my heart because I feel anger or fear or pride? The Good Book says we should love our enemies and those that use us. And I don't think it means to love them from afar. I think it means to get personal, to get down from our perches — like the Good Samaritan — and bandage up some wounds and wash out a few cuts.
Personal relationships are hands-on relationships.
Getting to that level will be a tall order. But eventually, it's an order we will all have to fill.
And I'm working on getting there.
For the time, however, I just hope I can find the wherewithal to snap those photos of the artisans who make little souvenirs for me to take home from my travels.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com