Feeling alive
Have you ever taken the time to think about what it means to be alive? I mean really looked around you and wondered at how amazing it is that somehow the inattimate chemical compounds and even smaller atomical elements that make up everything we see and ourselves somehow fuse in our brains to create an electrical grid that allows us to see the world around us and experience it. Sometimes I will just stare at my hand and flex my fingers, paying attention to the feel of the tendons and muscles as they expand and contract. Closing my eyes I focus on trying to feel ever joint and I listen close for what they have to tell me. I think part of the beauty of creation is the complexity of it all. No matter what you believe about how we got here you have to admit, it is pretty mind blowing.
Usually when I start having thoughts like this, the next thing that comes to my mind is the question why. Why, if creation is so amazing and complex, are we here? What it the purpose of the human existance? I believe we are here to do more than simply live our little lives in our little jobs with are little ambitions. Yet at the same time we are motivated by the most primal of desires, hunger, lust, greed, loneliness. For all of our understanding of the universe we still do not understand ourselves. It is amazing to me the debate that rages from time to time over the science of love. Is love a spontanious happenstance that is impossible to quantify with equations and formulas or is it a chemical state of mind that can be induced and disected like a dead lab rat.
The next thing that I always think of is who cares! What does it matter if we are here for the amusement of a higher power or simply some freak accident of science? It matters for the simple fact that we are here and we should treat each other with desency and respect. If for no other reason than the fact we do indeed exist! The greatest cause man can champion is the uplifting of others out of pure altruism. When I was working in the campus ministries office at SPU the thing that brought me the most pleasure was the looks people would give when they found a group of college students wanted to come and give up their free time on a saturday to do something for someone else. I am often afraid that we live in a world that cares less and less about the other guy, turning the focus increasingly inward, but then I remember something simple that someone did today to be nice to me, from holding open a door to letting me in in traffic, and I thank God for creating us with a desire to me nice, good people.
