Never Ending Saga of Life
Life is one of those things were you either get it or you don’t. I find that (myself included) most of us don’t get it. I think the reason for this is mostly due to the fact that we seem to have no goal or purpose in life these days. It used to be easy to say that everything was for the good of God or something to that effect. People’s motivation to do something was based on doing good in God’s eyes. That not a bad way to live, since it does create a generally good society for people to live in.
As it turns out these days, people are getting…. disenchanted with religion in general. It’s hard to see the purpose of religion in a society that worships money and objects. Since we’ve decided to put a value on nearly everything, it’s going to be difficult for religion to continue to thrive in this sort of environment. Sure, lots of people still goto church; but, eventually these people will be replaced by a set of people who value “objects” more than they do community and being with God.
See, it takes a lot of… foresight to see that being with God is a good thing. We don’t get any immediate reward while we live for that to make us feel good. We have to make that “feel” good ourselves. Now, I can attest that I can do something nice and in fact feel good. The problem is, it requires some effort on my part. Perhaps being late for dinner with friends or just time lost in general. It’s not that this sort of thing is bad, it’s that we would rather buy a $25 meal and eat it with our friend than help another person.
This brings me to an interesting idea about our motivations for helping people. The world is such a lonely place these days… that no one wants to meet a stranger who needs help and have that feel good feeling. They got get an object for that… no money… no big screen tv… nothing. It’s somewhat sad that we expect something in return for nearly everything we do now. Gone are the days when whole communities would get together to raise money for new park. We pay a city taxes and expect a park. Of course, when you have a whole city that wants new parks (or services in general); it becomes problematic for them to please everyone.
We essentially fall into what makes us miserable. We complain to people who apathetically agree with us and still feel alone. No one really understand that “I” want that because I paid for it. It’s not that we don’t understand the constrains of time or budget; but, we expect near instant gratification.
It’s a troubling problem to solve on a grand scale. I would say an easy start is to suck it up and help people. There are nearly infinite people who need help. Everyday I leave my house, I drive/walk by someone who I could of helped. Not the “out of the way” sort of help either; but, something that would of taken a moment of my time. See, what some of you may of realized now… is that at some point someone told us… helping people isn’t gratifying enough. I have no clue how this came to be; but, I can tell you with some certainty that it’s not true.
Consider this, we are a society of instant gratification. We run on working for money and spending it. Work is the part we endure because without it we couldn’t buy all the stuff that we need to remain happy. It’s an endless cycle we’ve been brought to believe. Now, imagine you helped one person a day. Be it loading a car with groceries or shoveling the walk of the infirm old man next door. Both of these things are like… work. You have to spend some time and put some effort into doing it. Here’s the kicker, you feel that same high as when you buy a new gadget or relax on the couch with nothing to do but watch a movie. It’s the same thing.
But wait, there’s more! Go do that; go help someone today and come back here. You’ll notice something amazing that seems to take people a life time to realize. When you help some one you feel good. You spend the rest of the day smiling and maybe, you help a few more people because it’s so easy. You come home, your in a good mood and instead of rotting our brains with tv… you do something else… you talk to your partner or friends. You realize that everything you’ve been doing has no goal until now.
People are social animals. Go look at some monkeys in a forest and you’ll get the idea. We need people, but we need them because they need us… not because we need them. The difference here is the greed of our need. When we’re living our artificially happy lives and hanging out with people… it’s for our benefit. When we are with other people because they need us, it’s for all the right reasons. Essentially, we’re working for free to make the people we “care” about feel good.
So, in closing I’d like to say this. Religion gets a lot of flack for leading people aimlessly about with worthless causes. That may be true; but, it does promote people to live in a world where happiness is not a new car or fancy clothes. Sure, they may have those things… but a few of them realize that it’s more about living a life that’s good to others. The ultimate reward in live is not money or stuff, it’s the people we care about; even if we don’t know them.
Dee said,
November 3, 2006 @ 11:58 am
We are a lazy society. That’s where it all stems from. No one wants to do anything that’s going to benefit someone else, unless it benefits them at the same time. Like being noticed as a “hero” for helping someone out, or something to that effect. People just don’t do “good” anymore. You don’t see good samaritans nearly as much as you used to. Society is very untrusting. And sometimes for very good reasons. People have become sick (violently speaking). All the sex offenders and abusers and people that just feel like killing for the sake of killing. It’s very sad. People take advantage of other people. Like those two men in Saskatoon (?) that acted homeless and took advantage of that lady. It made the news of course.
Anyway, done for me.
bigC said,
November 4, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
Let me start by saying you should write more blogs because you have good ideas and along with that a good ability to carry a topic without causing too much interruption..aka: you have a great “flow”. I do not propose to have that same great flow in what I’m about to write, but I want to comment anyway…
So, to begin, a suggestion would be what if you took the main idea of what you are saying in it and create a sort of action plan, because that could create some serious ripple effects when others saw the value of actually putting the plan into action. Seriously, this does have the potential to explode.I believe and I can see from what you wrote that you don’t believe people are inherently bad which they aren’t, they just don’t have direction. Take the reins!
I also don’t think we have just become like this and were previously an all-helping for the good of society culture. There has always been divides in society and those who are selfish and out for themselves only. At the same time, if there weren’t people who worked and worked and devoted their entire lives to science or technology or any other field for that matter, we would not have the life expectancy that we do, we would not we would not be able to write about things like this, we would not be able to meet people half way across the world, having a better understanding of the similarities and differences between people and the list goes on. Those people deserve their recognition and the point of it is to encourage others to do the same. The world is not sad and the people have not become sick as was commented above.
What you said about people becoming disenchanted with religion is not necessarily true. It is not because we have become more materialistic or have a value for everything. I think that maybe what is happening is that there are so many more people who have the ability, education and knowledge to challenge the ideas behind religion. Maybe religion just needs a little revamping to fit in with our ever changing world and be able to be put in more of a 21st century context where people do not talk with the words thou and shall. What we are disenchanted with is following ideas from thousands of years ago. We still all want to live in a happy and peaceful world.
But to come back to the whole point of your blog, you are right in saying that people need people. If everyone held this viewpoint there would not be millions of children dying every day from lack of nutrition or old widows sitting at home in their apartments waiting to die. The idea is not to go back to how it used to be but to instill in people an understanding of what is important. I think if we were all given the opportunity to feel what it is like to have someone unconditionally care about us then something like buying a pair of shoes for 200.00 would not even cross our minds.
Amen