During Christmas break, I was a chaperon for my old youth group for a ski trip to Winter Park, Colorado. Instead of taking the slightly more expensive yet much more leisure form of travel, flying, we chose to "bond" and charter a bus. Thus 40 hours in a bus (round trip), yields much time to read. A good friend of mine encouraged me several months ago to read David McCulloch's biography of John Adams, so this trip gave me the perfect opportunity to delve into the life of an all-around wonderful man. While I would love to post tons of quotes from the letters of John Adams to Abagail and his children (I cannot recall another person's words and life that have so captivated me), this one piece of advice from Mr. Smith, Abagail's father, has resonated with me.
"Abagail remembered her father saying repeatedly that they should only speak of 'handsome things' and make topics, rather than people, their subjects."
This philosophy caused me to reflect upon my daily interactions and conversations. Whereas I would like to say that topics are discussed more than people, I am convinced that is only partially true. There are some people that I could talk to all day about books, movies, politics, ambitions, etc... without ever mentioning people and the latest goings-on. Other people though, I find only discussing mutual friends and their lives. I wonder if the latter conversations are not due to more shallow friendships, because I like to believe that we all have pretty solid foundations, but rather society's focus. With Facebook, Twitter, and the internet in general, I feel like people have this increasing desire to be the first to know something and to be connected to as many people as possible. In the days when Abagail's father was giving this advice, the only way to keep up with people was by written correspondence or by living in close proximity, but definitely not access to information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wonder how they would behave in today's world, and more importantly, I hope we can try to not get caught up in people, but rather heed Mr. Smith's advice and be educated on topics.
