The Cavalier Daily
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Loving through the cracks

Thanksgiving thoughts on bridging the gap between generations

<p>Peyton’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at p.williams@cavalierdaily.com.</p>

Peyton’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at p.williams@cavalierdaily.com.

My grandmother is one of the most beautiful women I know. She spends her days pouring herself into her community with so much energy and joy, preparing meals for people who are sick, coordinating holiday toy and clothing drives and heading a monthly senior luncheon at her church. And she does all of this simply to remind others how deeply they are loved.

One of my favorite pastimes is visiting her and spending the afternoon chatting over a glass of tea. Whatever the conversation, I always leave her house feeling full of love and tiny tidbits of insight.

Despite the pleasantries of these conversations, more often than not, in our intergenerational discussions, we tend to allow pride to intercede. We think we know best and our predecessors are ignorant, judgmental and intolerant to change. But when we step back from these frustrations and accusations, we come to recognize we are the ones being ignorant and judgmental, forgetting the setting in which our grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, friends and foes wrote their stories. We disregard the worlds in which they grew up and disrespect the poems they wrote.

It’s not easy to meet people with strikingly different outlooks, forgive them for differences in opinion and genuinely respect them anyway. But when we come to understand the importance of breaking these barriers between generations, we can learn so much from one another’s experiences. For in every encounter and every relationship, there is some small seed of splendor buried deep beneath the folds of one another’s stories, simply waiting to be sown into our own hearts.

Therefore, this Thanksgiving, I call us to come to the table with open hearts and readied minds. I ask that we see one another for the beauty that lies beneath our differences. My grandmother and I may not see eye to eye on everything, but we love each other in the midst of a truth that goes beyond opinion; we love because we feel an uncontrollable need to do so. She has shown me what it means to have a spirit overcome by grace, and for this, I am forever grateful.

Peyton’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at p.williams@cavalierdaily.com.

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