Purpose

I really don’t even know how to start this one. I was thinking about it yesterday at work, but was too tired and lazy to write it out yesterday. I guess I’ve noticed it before, but yesterday I spent considerable time thinking about it and exploring just how many people out there do it.

It started with me noticing how some people tend to sort of hide behind things. Some people hide behind the fact that they are “spiritual” (although who really knows what that means?), and they tend to hold their noses up around people who aren’t “spiritual.” Other people tend to hide behind the fact that they are “intellectual” like it’s a feat to be envied. Still others will brandish the fact that they are a liberal, or a moral relativist, or a union member, or one of a million other things.

The thing that I noticed was that everyone wears a “badge” that they hide behind. It’s something that tends to motivate them and perhaps give them a sense of purpose and belonging. To most people it’s also a way for the person to consider themselves better than the majority of other people.

The funny thing about these badges that people hide behind is that they mean almost nothing to anyone who doesn’t wear the same one. To use myself as an example, I would probably get along fairly well with the intellects and philosophers because they are hiding behind the same things as I am. But to the person who is materialistic and caught up in the everyday things in life (which I think is a badge itself), I would be a retard not worth saying “Hi” to when passing on the street.

I don’t know what any of that means. Maybe it only means that I just recently discovered that every person on earth is hiding behind things that they consider to be part of their identity (even though some day all those things will mean absolutely squat). Or maybe I just realized how stupid and futile it is to try and hide behind such things (although I doubt that will change me at all).

Today I had a different subject though. It actually took quite a few hours of ponderless driving for this one to come to me though.

For some reason I was thinking about how almost every culture throughout history has thought that they are (or were) the center of the universe. People have always thought things to the effect of “the universe revolves around the earth.” For some reason it seems to be human nature to think that way.

I then noticed how Christianity (and some other religions) tend to follow that line of thinking. They say that “the God of the universe” loves each of us individually so much that he would die for us (if God can die). That he would give anything for us, that he has given us so much, etc. Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds a bit like the whole “the universe revolves around me” theory. In an effort to try and find purpose and meaning to life (which as I’ve said before no one has actually promised any of us that there is), they try to search for a higher power in which they can be the center of that higher power’s universe.

Maybe not. I don’t know. I think I just have too much stuff floating in my head and I can’t express well in words the things I’ve thought through so clearly during the day.

“I miss the comfort of being sad.”- Nirvana