Still pondering this one...
I think I like it. I think I agree. I think...
I think I'm one of the most ethical people I know..... but I could be wrong. I often am, especially in what I think about me.
I have no real faith, not even enough to be an atheist. Except that I believe in the wisdom of a lot of what Jesus said. Or what someone said that he said. And a fair amount of what someone said the Buddha said. And a lot of other stuff too. I believe that the most important things in the world are moderation and consideration. A lot of people would include love, but I don't. Love just makes you want to treat the loved one(s) moderately and with consideration. The secret is to treat everyone else moderately and with consideration.
I have high expectations of what humans could and should be, and I guess that's a sort of faith. Of course, that faith is dashed to the rocks daily by the reality of what people are, but somehow I don't lose hold of it. But I do get more and more frustrated and sad. It makes me want to preach, to tell people what they could be, and should be.
But of course, I'm not what I could be or should be, so who the hell am I to talk?
But I do know a fair amount about what I could be and should be, more I think than a lot of people. I've just thought about it more. It's important to me. You can tell by the way I drive. You'd never notice me, because I'm always in the middle of the pack, just holding a place. That's the moderate and considerate thing to do. And I know that these things are more of a reality to me than they are to most people simply because there are so few of us in the middle of the pack just holding our places, and so many fighting and struggling for illusory gain. They don't understand.
But a lot of those people, if asked, would tell you much about their beliefs. Many of them believe that their faith is strong and their lives are properly lived. But they're wrong. Anybody who drives like that just doesn't get it.
What they've done is crammed a belief system into the space that they dimly think was labelled "belief system" and it seems to fit, and they can surely compensate for the places where it doesn't, and really, they've got all these other things they have to do, and the boss is getting on them, and there's that new guy in the office who's kissing butt so hard, and they gotta slap his ass back down but fast and...
And besides, you can always play golf after church, so what's it really hurt?
But you know, right alongside these people, there are people who have more than anyone else. For all those great unanswered questions of life, they have a detailed set of answers that they didn't have to ponder and fuss about, and they understand, almost intuitively, the importance of living moderately and considerately. I envy those people. Sometimes. Although I think I'd miss pondering and fussing.
And besides, I'd always wonder if I was right -- not about the way to live, but about all of those unanswered questions. I simply can't just pick an answer and run with it. I have to know that it's right, or at least have some evidence to make me think that it's right.
But I keep thinking that ultimately the answers to the mysteries of life aren't what's important. We know where we are, and we know about how long we've got, and when it gets right down to it, all we do is live from day to day. Preferably with moderation and consideration.
It would be nice if someone could start a club or a school or whatever -- I guess just a place, where people could go learn about how to be nice to each other and how to live well and to live so that others might live well too. A place where they could be taught that if everybody were to live this way the strife would be gone. Gone. But only if everybody lived well. A place where they could be led to understand that if they're afraid of what the other person might do if they let their guard down, and so they live by the new rule of "do unto others before they do unto you," they are the reason they have to live that way. We need a place that teaches them all of these things in ways that are meaningful and obvious, but... without all of the answers to the unsolved mysteries. Really those answers don't matter in the long run -- they're not crucial to the issue of how I live my life. And I think they're distracting. I think that too many people believe that they're good Christians (and I don't mean to pick on Christians, they're just the ones I'm most familiar with), because they have totally convinced themselves, they believe with all of their hearts, that almost 2,000 years ago a man rose from the dead and... and... well they're not sure what happened after that, but... But in the midst of learning and memorizing and believing all of that stuff, they failed to learn about being nice to each other, about turning the other cheek, and forgiving trespasses, and doing unto others as they would have others do unto them.
I think we need a place that teaches all of the things about how to live a good life without distracting people with stories about what somebody said that somebody said that God did way back sometime. That could be the place that I could go to express my faith. Not a faith in some story about where the world came from or how we got to be here, but a faith in the ability of people to be good, and kind, and moderate and considerate.
And that's probably enough night-owl babbling for now.
-BLT |
