The new name…

Hi friends and family! – it’s us, back to the blog habit after a much extended hiatus. Most of you know what we’ve been up to for the past 6 months, so giving a summary would probably be redundant. In fact, that begs a question about the purpose of a blog in the first place, doesn’t it? Of course, there are infinite raisons d’etre for the modern “blog” – random thoughts, vacation journal, waxing philosophical, social commentary, world news, and so on. Our reason? We do indeed have friends and family that we sadly don’t see on a regular basis, who live in other states or countries and probably get something out of our blog entries. And though to some extent they/you must love to read a bit on something going on in our world, most often it is not entirely news to you, since we do talk on occasion too. So if the reason for our blog is not ONLY to keep our family and friends informed on the days of our lives, what IS it? 

Here’s what I think, and this leads to the new title for this blog “Go Stand Next to That!”. How to explain… The phrase “Go stand next to that” is something a person might say to another when getting ready to take a picture of something particularly cool to them – a monument, let’s say. They are traveling and see the lovely and important monument and want to remember it, they want to record it in their memory, so they whip out their camera. But then it occurs to them that a simple picture of an important monument might not be all that interesting in the long run without something else in it to say “we were here!”. So, as a solution, they tell their companion to “Go stand next to that!”, at which time their companion takes the required position in front of the monument, smiles, perhaps raises a hand in a wave, and the moment-saving frame is snapped. They needed perspective in their picture, so they ‘stood next to it’. 

Christian and I have been saying that phrase to each other in jest since, probably, our 2nd date. I picked it up from a friend back in my UC Santa Cruz days, and passed it on the Christian when we met. It has become our “thing”, in a way. We laugh when we say it in a kind of touristy way, perhaps with a Southern accent and a shrill to our voice. So, why not name our blog after it, right? Well, partly. The other partly goes back to that story of the monument and perspective. Without getting too very deep in the well of depthness, isn’t it true that life must be viewed from the proper angle to be correctly interpreted? It’s the forest-for-the-trees thing – you stand too close to the trees, all you see is a lot of confusing trees, and nothing of the forest they belong to. Stand back, look again, and you see a beautiful forest, you make sense of all the mess, or at least the darn leaves stop falling on your head. Perspective is about looking back on life’s events and making some sense of them, putting them into the greater picture. It’s also about taking a current event in your life and putting it in it’s proper place, allowing it to be the monument it might be without just being a monument – instead it’s a monument that means something to YOU, that gives meaning to other things in your life too. Oops, getting too deep!

Anyway, thus the blog title and sub – gaining perspective one adventure at a time. We live and we try to learn. That’s life. That’s our life, and we hope to not only share it with you, our family and friends near and far, but also to gain some perspective for ourselves by “going and standing next to it.”

– Jen

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