When the Launch Window Opens
Seizing opportunities for better relationships
In October, the launch window to Mars opened up. This only happens every 26 months, and depending on the goal, teams have anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks to launch their mission.
This is a helpful metaphor for me for the upcoming holidays. Sure, technology gives us access to each other all the time, but there are certain windows in the life of a family or system that are unique. They provide us with in-person opportunities to observe patterns and move towards people.
For families, these opportunities could be events like holidays, deaths, illness, births, weddings, religious rites, or big decisions.
What are the upcoming launch windows in the life of your family, your organization, your congregation, your community?
What would be the evidence that you had taken a launch window and done something with it?
What does it take to show up and learn something about yourself and others? How much contact, and what kind of contact does it take?
I’m always fascinated when someone makes the transition from dreading contact to being curious about it. How they begin to move into someone’s orbit and see what they can do with themselves. I think it helps when people recognize that failure is an essential piece of the effort. We learn just as much from those missions as the successful ones, if not more.
These efforts don’t happen organically. They require analysis and planning, because it’s all too easy to talk yourself out of the opportunity. To say, “I’ll catch the next window, the next holiday, the next event.”
My hope for anyone, including myself, is to take this exploratory spirit into relationships this holiday season. To embrace the unfamiliarity of some of the territory. And if you need to give your trip home a NASA-style mission name, then by all means go for it.
Do whatever keeps you interested and open to a new way of relating.
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