Monday, June 13, 2005
What matters
It happened that last week, as we were visiting my parents, they got the call informing them that my uncle had died. So about an hour later, I was sitting on their couch and wondering why nobody ever taught me about the important stuff. I felt very useless and stupid, sitting there not knowing what to say to my father when his brother just died.
I'm not suggesting that having some teacher along the way lecture me about grieving would have helped. I know about Kubler-Ross's research on grief and that sort of thing. But that didn't tell me what I could say or do. And while possibly no one could have told me what to say or do, talking about it at some point might have helped.
But in this country, we don't particularly talk about anything important. We've all but forbidden any serious discussion of God, because you'll either be dismissed as foolish by the eggheads, who have all decided that they're smarter than all the brilliant people who came before who were convinced God was real, or silenced by religious zealots who won't let you talk honestly about God. (One of my co-workers once said in class that he would be on campus every day "God willing." A student went to the dean to complain about his "casual" talk about God.)
We don't seem able to talk seriously about any serious matters, either. About death or life or marriage (or any sort of commitment) or what kind of society we are becoming. Or about what we will be when, inevitably, we are no longer the world power. We could make good choices right now about that--about whether we want to become a former power like Britain, that still retains influence and pride, or whether we intend to fade into nothing like so many major powers before us.
But we're too busy, busy with TV shows that deliberately avoid anything important, busy buying crap to distract us from those important things until they sneak up on us, and someone dies, or we're forced to confront a major decision, or we find ourselves in over our heads and we wonder if God still listens to people.
I wish we would make more time and energy for the important things. I intend to. In fact, I'm convinced that if I do, the less important things will recede to their proper place, and the less serious things, the frivolous things, the fun things will be sweeter.
I was not close to my uncle. But I will always remember the joke he used to play on me when I was small. "You wanna see the geese?" he would ask, and if I said yes (probably only the first time), he would stand behind me and cup my head in his hands to tilt it up to "see the geese." Then he would lift me off the ground by my jawbone, leaving my feet dangling in the air. Thereafter, for years, he would ask, and I would hastily say, "No."
But now I wish that at least one more time I had said, "Sure!"
I'm not suggesting that having some teacher along the way lecture me about grieving would have helped. I know about Kubler-Ross's research on grief and that sort of thing. But that didn't tell me what I could say or do. And while possibly no one could have told me what to say or do, talking about it at some point might have helped.
But in this country, we don't particularly talk about anything important. We've all but forbidden any serious discussion of God, because you'll either be dismissed as foolish by the eggheads, who have all decided that they're smarter than all the brilliant people who came before who were convinced God was real, or silenced by religious zealots who won't let you talk honestly about God. (One of my co-workers once said in class that he would be on campus every day "God willing." A student went to the dean to complain about his "casual" talk about God.)
We don't seem able to talk seriously about any serious matters, either. About death or life or marriage (or any sort of commitment) or what kind of society we are becoming. Or about what we will be when, inevitably, we are no longer the world power. We could make good choices right now about that--about whether we want to become a former power like Britain, that still retains influence and pride, or whether we intend to fade into nothing like so many major powers before us.
But we're too busy, busy with TV shows that deliberately avoid anything important, busy buying crap to distract us from those important things until they sneak up on us, and someone dies, or we're forced to confront a major decision, or we find ourselves in over our heads and we wonder if God still listens to people.
I wish we would make more time and energy for the important things. I intend to. In fact, I'm convinced that if I do, the less important things will recede to their proper place, and the less serious things, the frivolous things, the fun things will be sweeter.
I was not close to my uncle. But I will always remember the joke he used to play on me when I was small. "You wanna see the geese?" he would ask, and if I said yes (probably only the first time), he would stand behind me and cup my head in his hands to tilt it up to "see the geese." Then he would lift me off the ground by my jawbone, leaving my feet dangling in the air. Thereafter, for years, he would ask, and I would hastily say, "No."
But now I wish that at least one more time I had said, "Sure!"
