Intangibles

I'm glad that I'm writing like this but man, I gotta tell you that there is a lot in my memory banks and I just don't know how to write it down into any context. I am a cornucopia of stories that contain no ascertainable point. Neither concrete starting points nor tangible endings. It isn't really that I don't have anything to write about. It's just that I struggle with finding a centralized point. Kind of like a truck with a bad drag link, wobbling down the road.

Perhaps a nihilist would jump in here and offer this diatribe up as proof that life is full of pointless moments, grouped together into larger, equally pointless coexistences. I am not a member of that camp, although in the past I have warmed myself by their fire from time to time. Most days (and today is no exception) I feel that there is great signifigance not only to to our lives but even to every little mundane moment that the things are made from. It's on days like today that I look at the apparent pointlessness of a nondescript moment in time, any given moment in my day, and say, "OK, so the significance of this moment is not readily apparent, but I trust that it will be revealed to me in time."

I think that most people can agree that this is one of the rewards that we anticipate upon reaching Heaven. We of course dread the moment when our sins are revealed and we are held accountable, but we are also dying of curiosity to see the final numbers on how much time we spent sleeping or waiting for the bus, how many hot dogs we ate, the actual mileage between each and every oil change and how many times we swallowed our gum vs. folding it neatly into the wrapper & throwing it away.

We wonder about things like these because life is cumulative. One of the hardest things in life is when we outlive our ability to maintain our own residence. When you have to get rid of your possessions in order to fit into a nursing home you are getting rid of more than just things. You are getting rid of the physical components of your collective history here on earth. Or perhaps in more direct terms you are destroying the evidence that you were ever here. We are more than happy to replace or upgrade our stuff- Cars, houses, golf clubs, etc., but nobody really wants to take a loss. That's pretty much why nobody wants to buy what nursing homes and planned retirement communities are selling. It's like conceding to our eventual defeat.

This of course is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the Christian faith. I cannot honestly say that I have truly denied myself, not even just a little. I will close this rant today by declaring my intention to confront my own obsession with my belongings by by getting rid of something(s) that I have been hoarding for no good reason. I may not need to find significance in my life by understanding every single moment of it, but I have at least learned enough from the example of my parents to know that the sum total of my life's meaning cannot be defined by how much crap I have in my basement.