Friday, June 06, 2008

What Matters

The daily quest, the everpresent challenge, is determining what matters.

We are assaulted by trivia, surrounded by information, told that this book and that paper are must reads and certain plays, games, and films simply cannot be missed. When events and things aren't presenting distractions, people take over. If we are fortunate, they are pleasant people and yet there are plenty of unpleasant characters who love to spread their unhappiness.

Life is discovering what matters.

Mention religion to some individuals and they scatter like deer. I've met people who would rather reveal the details of their sex lives or delve into some dark, personal scandal than discuss God. By ignoring it, they are not just missing A Big Question; they are probably missing The Big Question.

[Mention spiritualism and they move closer, possibly because they get to define what spiritualism is and can erase any inconvenient requirements. Don't like a commandment? Say it doesn't apply. Better yet, make up a new one.]

Mention philosophy and watch as eyes glaze over. That was required reading, right? Let's talk about more practical stuff, such as mutual funds and vacation homes. How can Aristotle or Kant pertain to my daily life?

Mention politics and you may spark some excitement. One can love politics and yet worry about political utopians in much the same way that people worry about religious zealots. Historian Robert Conquest noted that during the 20th century millions were slaughtered by people who wanted to make things better. [To the argument of utopian regimes that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, one wag responded, "Where's the omelet?"]

We hardly need to spend any time on the materialists. I may not know much, but one thing that can be stated with certainty is "He (or she) who dies with the most toys wins" is not true.

Fame is another empty vessel. Dennis Prager was correct when he observed that we should never, ever, confuse fame with significance.

Death camp survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that our ultimate power is our ability to choose what sort of people we are going to be. Every day we do so by deciding what matters. Much of our decision is determined by what we don't want. We don't want to be haters or bigots or fools. Those may seem to be easy choices but a sizable number of people choose otherwise. What is truly challenging is picking what matters, what positive things do we want to be.

What guides you in that choice?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, Michael. Thank you.

A classically American approach to this is some version of Jefferson's Bible. TJ took two Bibles, then cut out the pieces he agreed with to make a Bible he liked.

Michael Wade said...

Thanks, Wally.

I love the Jefferson story. His editing practice has, I fear, modern practitioners.