Life will go on after the World Cup. They say that over 700 million people watched the final between Spain and the Netherlands, which represents approximately 10% of the entire world population. It is interesting to me that for a month, people of all walks of life put down life and become spectators of what is the international sporting language. Some say it is a unifying event, others would disagree. Perhaps many would take issue with the statement that soccer is even beautiful. Most Americans dislike or even hate the sport because there isn't enough scoring. That's because Americans love commercials, and Americans have gotten used to instant gratification, and Americans are in love with meritocracy and quantification. There is no quantification for much of what makes soccer, in my mind at least, beautiful.
But this is only a tangent. What is most interesting is that life will go on. And after the most incredible sporting event in the world crowns its victor every four years, there is still life. And that life begs the "eternal question." Hamlet's question. The questions that haunt the richest and the poorest, those who had box seats for the World Cup final and those of the 90% who didn't see it because they didn't even have electricity. You must answer these questions, just as i must answer them. Is there a purpose for human existence? If so, what is it and how can we determine it? Is there a purpose for your individual daily life? If so, in what or Whom or in reaching what end is it found? What is love? How can i love and whom should i love? Am i to be held accountable by Anyone but myself?
if there is a God, where is He?
The following is a blog post i read just recently. Some of these questions come up, and, although perhaps quite implicity, are even dealt with in a fashion. In fact, it seems that all of the questions that face us are answered by the author in the last two sentences of the text.
I wish that when I was younger I could have met my current self. We would have sat down at a coffee shop so that I could explain life to young me in terms that only we would understand. It would have saved me a lot of hardship.
You can listen to all the sage wisdom you want, but things only make sense when you can explain them to yourself in your own words. For instance, I’ve been told for three years that Breaking Bad is the best show on television, but only after I watched it was I able to tell myself exactly why everyone was right. Other truths I know now that I can explain them: that I’m not missing any crucial information and that poker really isn’t all that fun; that heartbreaks do fade but they take about a year longer than you expect and by the time they do you really don’t care about it enough to notice; and above all else, life is simpler than you think.
I used to think that life was an intricate series of levers and pulleys, buttons and switches, Mexican standoffs and hostage negotiations. As I get older I realize that life is more Netherlands minimalist than Jackson Pollock. The problems don’t get fewer, and in fact they grow in number, but the way I index them in the database is different. More problems get filed under fewer category headers.
Things are getting simpler, and it’s making life better. Here’s the cheat sheet:
People want to be liked. We all crave attention and affection and we all reject shame. When we get embarrassed we send a thug version of ourselves to the forefront to do our fighting for us. We’re at the top of the food chain just under fear. We don’t want to be in a relationship to hear the words “I love you,” we want to be in a relationship to say the words “I love you.” We want to feel needed, and exceptional and we hate feeling insignificant. We want to ace a hearing test. We are binary creatures; if we’re the plaintiff, we want to win every dollar. If we’re the defendant, we want to guard every penny. We want to make more money than last year. We don’t want to get cancer or die in our cars and we want the same for our loved ones. We go out on weekends to try and have sex while trying not to get punched in the face. We drink so we can be ourselves and not mind it so much. We’re desperate to be understood. We want to know someone else has felt it, too. We hate being judged unfairly. We want to make the person we heard wasn’t all that into us change their minds and admit they had us wrong. We want sunny skies with a chance of killer tornadoes, just to keep music sounding good. We take hours upon hours to admit to self consciousness. We don’t know exactly how to pleasure each other. We just want love. In any and every form.
See? It’s simple. :)
But it isn't so simple, because again, what is love? And why do we seek it? And is it true that we are "binary creatures"? And where did death and music come from? And if John Mayer, the author of all of these conjectures, hasn't found the "love" we all want, then what if he is simply looking in all the wrong places?
i firmly believe there is Truth and that there are answers to these questions, and i think that much of that Truth can be found in what Paul had to say to a group of people who had a lot of unanswered questions themselves:
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. 'For in Him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are His offspring.'
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising Him from the dead."
Acts 17:24-31
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