Conversations Like Currents

I had a revelation yesterday that I hope you'll enjoy.

Recently, a close friend of mine went through a hard time - her dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack. My heart went out to her; I can't even imagine the pain she must have felt and must still feel. However, it has been over a week now since his death and she is doing much better, so a group of girls from church including myself went to her apartment to visit and take her lots of junk food.

We arrived at her abode and bestowed our gifts - pizzas, chocolate chip cookies, candy, cake, and cheetos - before settling in to talk for a while. Her family was in the kitchen next to us; because she is African-American, her family was speaking mostly the-language-you-speak-in-Ethiopia-that-I-do-not-know-the-name-of-though-find-fascinating-and-very-cool.

At any rate, I paused for a few minutes and sat on the couch and just listened to all the different conversations going on around me. Conversations weaving over heads and around people, conversations between two people huddled together, conversations in a foreign language, loud conversations, quiet conversations. It sounded all together like rain falling on a roof; so many different sounds, sizes, and shapes of speech all falling from lips at the same time.

That's when I realized that conversations are like the ocean currents in Finding Nemo.

Remember? For Dory and Marlin to get to P. Sherman Wallabe Way Sydney, they had to ride that current with all the sea turtles. The only way for the to get on the current was to break through the barrier and just jump right in, being whisked away in the rushing water. And in order to get out, they had to do the same thing all over again.

Conversations are like that, aren't they? Sitting on the couch at my friend's apartment, I could hear many different conversations going on at once. I had to choose which one to participate in and break into it, jumping with both feet. Once I was a part of that conversation, I couldn't be a part of the others. The only way to join any of those was to break out of the one I was in and then bust into the next.

Does that make sense?

Oh, well.

I thought it was interesting.