I love intense people. They bring out the extremes in everything around them. People can feel their energy, positive and negative. Living creatures, humans and animals, respond to the force from within and echo it back. When the force is destructive bad things tend to follow. When the power is positive, Hope comes alive, Compassion springs into action, and Community knocks.
I wanted to dinner recently with two friends. With one, intensity is a given. From his sharp, focused eyes and the rest of his body language, one sees and feels the passion from within, his thirsty intensity to embrace life to the fullest. As our conversation and dinner progressed I found myself reveling in the experience, even when we disagreed. I left the evening with a strong sense of Possible.
With the other, I was never sure. At times he was intense, yet there were moments where his spirit did not seem to be present. As much as I enjoyed the moments of intensity, I found myself wondering if they would ever return. It was like riding a seesaw, while it is fun to go up and down, you never seemed to get anywhere.
In reflection I caught myself putting those close to me into intensity buckets. Most seemed to fit but there were some, God included, that I wasn’t sure about. I realized that the way I looked at each had more to do with my own views than it did with the facts. I thought of how others described them and it confirmed that my bias, born out of experience or imagination, shaped my view. David once made the following comment about God; “He gets angry once in a while, but across a lifetime there is only love. The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter.” (Psalm 30.5) It was a view that reflected passionate intensity in his relationship with Divinity. I do not always have that. My bias set the stage and frames the memory. Changing this changes everything.
Today is an opportunity to embrace passionate intensity.
