On a sunny February afternoon in Vegas, I developed a theory- if you make eye contact with a stranger, shout "FRISBEE", then launch a frisbee at him, he has no choice but to catch it. Or at least fetch it wherever it lands and toss it back.
My friends and I were at University of Nevada Las Vegas every day for a week leading up to an event we were hosting on campus. The goal was to spread the word about the event, which we did while giving out free snow cones, chatting with food truck workers, hanging out at sorority recruitment booths, and whatever we sort of stumbled into doing that day in order to meet people. After a couple days I found myself tossing around a frisbee with two of my friends, feeling we had basically exhausted our resources in how to meet new people and make friends on campus without being too forced or weird. We must have been feeling a bit silly that day, because we decided to throw our frisbee at unsuspecting and often unwilling passersby just to see what would happen. Some loved it, yelling "Go long!" and backing up for me to pelt it to them. Some looked embarrassed and dodged it, blushing as they picked it up and tossed it back. Some caught it on their way to class, and again as they walked back an hour later. A surprising amount not only threw it back, but they joined us in our game for awhile and excitedly inquired about when they could meet again for our "Frisbee Club", making us realize we had possibly unintentionally created a school club at a college we didn't attend. But I don't recall a single person ignoring the frisbee and not throwing it back.
Something sort of magical happens when people feel seen and included. People soften. They let their guard down for a moment, wondering if the person in front of them would actually have the audacity to break their personal protective bubble in order to bring them in and show them love.
I learned this not only through my frisbee social experiment, but through another bubble-bursting action my friends and I often did this winter. We would walk through university campuses, stop any random stranger, and ask the person, "Hi, could I compliment you?" People typically had no clue how to respond, probably wondering what our hidden agenda would be. But in the moments when these people would give us permission to love them, it was amazing watching their walls melt as we spoke words of kindness and truth. Anything from "Your jacket matches your shoes really nice" to "I can tell you are such a good friend", whatever God led us to call out in them. Yes, Jesus often came up. When they asked in wonder how we knew things about them or why we would be speaking to them in this way, we unashamedly told them that Jesus' love drives us and moves through us. But what was our agenda? Get them to follow Jesus? Get them to come to our event? Get them to follow us on Instagram and think we're cool hip missionaries? No, our motive was simply to get people to soften enough to experience and receive unbiased, unmanipulative, no strings attached truth and love.
We live in a culture where people pull out their phones at a bus stop, pretending to scroll through something interesting so they don't need to make eye contact with the human being next to them. We move quickly from important class to important meeting to important interview to important phone call, not even considering the importance of the people we briskly brush past on our way. I think we feign importance and busyness to block out potential rejection or judgment or pain that could come from allowing ourselves to be seen by anyone more than a few specific people.
Why then did faces light up when I forced them to join my frisbee game, though they were clearly on their way somewhere else? Why did so many tear up from simply hearing a stranger tell them that they have a beautiful smile?
Few people truly have walls. Most have things more like those flimsy manila folders your science teacher would get you to prop up between you and your neighbor during a test. But life isn't a test, and we don't have to protect ourselves from being seen by others. Perfect love and perfect acceptance has already walked the Earth, has already called you His, has already laid out your worth. What if we who know that love and acceptance chose not only to lay down our barriers and live it out, but to bring others into it with no motive but love? What if we kept our phones in our pockets and asked the person at the bus stop about their day? What if we walked slower and looked around a bit and smiled? What if we stopped pretending how important we are and took a moment to make a stranger feel important?
I want to practice throwing frisbees without worrying whether or not people will throw them back.
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| long live UNLV Frisbee Club |
