Dianne is one of the voices of reason in my life. The thing about Dianne's reason is, it's never what I expect. Her advice and take on things usually surprise me - she challenges my status quo. She thinks differently from me. Like looking through a View Master, I sometimes only see what's directly in front of my face, as though my life has been predetermined and designed to be rendered on my own personal cartoon reel, that has been used over and over again.
A conflict or crossroads will arise. I will over analyze it. When I play it out, it will have something like one of three endings. But all three of those endings will be the result of a formula, a history, the only ways I can envision the outcome in my shortsightedness. And all of those endings will be a version of the way things always have been. They may all be unappealing, but they are all I can see.
It's dramatic and self-indulgent and I do it over and over.
Dianne, who is thankfully not inside my View Master, will say something along the lines of: it doesn't have to be that way. Just because it's not one of the ways I can envision this, doesn't mean it's not possible. She challenges my world view, my faith perspective, my perception of people and how I experience them, my understanding of relationships, my vision of some future version of myself ... just about everything.
This friendship has been of inestimable value to me. Dianne not only listens (repeatedly) to my over-indulgent over-analyses (saint), but shes gets me outside of myself - she removes that reel that's worn from use, and says it's time for a new one.
It's hard to give this lesson any skin without examples, which I won't share here. But I want to give a nod to Dianne for reminding me frequently that just because it doesn't fit into the formula or the expectation based on the past, doesn't mean it can't be part of the picture. It quite possibly can be any way I want it to be.
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