Bobby Bailey (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bobbybailey) wrote,@ 2005-04-03 01:11:00 |
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crying in the wild night of doubt
Dear World,
The title above is a little grave here, so I will immediately assure all readers that while I consider the content contained herein very serious, in the grand scheme of things, I know it's not really that big of a deal so don't get worried about me. I reflect on many things, but none more than this so I thought I would share my thoughts with the world.
Let me also preface this by saying, that some existentialist dude once said that he never felt a day of despair in his whole life. I feel that way too. I am hugely blessed. I got great parents that raised me. Great parents that gave me life. Four awesome families full of insanely great people. Siblings I am proud to have. Friends who put up with my bullshit and are always ready for adventure. I'm smart. I have a great job. I try to be a good steward of my talents and various blessings. I have been lucky enough to have loved and been loved by a few pretty girls. In general, my life is pretty much prefect. The best part is, I am working to make it better, and it seems to get sweeter by the day.
My main goal in life is to raise a family and be a great husband and father. Seriously, if I do have the job my parents did with me, I think it'll work out great. I have the other "normal" goals too: financial security, nice house, stick shift convertible, etc.
Now, it would seem with all that said, I would have the philosophy department all sewn up. But I just don't.
I try to live my life as Christ-like as possible. I want to be forgiving. I want to help others, even if sometimes tradition stands in the way. I want to not judge. I want to improve the lives of the people I touch. I want to generally be a nice guy and not get caught up in the unimportant stuff in life.
That said, I want, with great desperation, to be have faith. My heart is filled with so much doubt. The world, with so much absurdity and misery, is a hard thing to deal with while trying to believe in a loving creator.
Without a God, life is pretty much meaningless. We simply become chemical reactions driven by sunlight just trying to survive as long as possible. The "soul" is just the firing of neurons in the brain. Love is just something to assist in the mating process. Put simply, life just becomes a waste of time without God.
I think of all the order and beauty in the world and I can't help but think that there is a greater order or meaning. This thing around me, and my life, cannot just be a random machination in a grand sea of chaos. DNA is so so complicated. The machinery of life is beyond complex. I want to just succumb to it, and believe that I matter.
As close as I can come, I am sidetracked by so so many things. The thought of a person changing because of chemical or injury. How permanent can the soul really be if we are so fragile that our very identities are subject to our physicality. Life, it seems, is cheap and perhaps getting cheaper. So many people kill and are killed for meaningless things that I wonder why God sits idle. The crusades, the holocaust, all the wars, and all the needless pain and suffering in the world makes no sense. It all seems so absurd.
A friend of mine once said that "the ways of God are not the ways of man". Can light exist without dark. Can we truly be happy without knowing sadness?
What is my point with all this? I want to have faith. I want to know that my life and the lives around me matter. I want to just live knowing that we are more than atoms.
I welcome any and all comments on this, be it in this forum or in person.
Sincerely,
bobby
Dear World,
The title above is a little grave here, so I will immediately assure all readers that while I consider the content contained herein very serious, in the grand scheme of things, I know it's not really that big of a deal so don't get worried about me. I reflect on many things, but none more than this so I thought I would share my thoughts with the world.
Let me also preface this by saying, that some existentialist dude once said that he never felt a day of despair in his whole life. I feel that way too. I am hugely blessed. I got great parents that raised me. Great parents that gave me life. Four awesome families full of insanely great people. Siblings I am proud to have. Friends who put up with my bullshit and are always ready for adventure. I'm smart. I have a great job. I try to be a good steward of my talents and various blessings. I have been lucky enough to have loved and been loved by a few pretty girls. In general, my life is pretty much prefect. The best part is, I am working to make it better, and it seems to get sweeter by the day.
My main goal in life is to raise a family and be a great husband and father. Seriously, if I do have the job my parents did with me, I think it'll work out great. I have the other "normal" goals too: financial security, nice house, stick shift convertible, etc.
Now, it would seem with all that said, I would have the philosophy department all sewn up. But I just don't.
I try to live my life as Christ-like as possible. I want to be forgiving. I want to help others, even if sometimes tradition stands in the way. I want to not judge. I want to improve the lives of the people I touch. I want to generally be a nice guy and not get caught up in the unimportant stuff in life.
That said, I want, with great desperation, to be have faith. My heart is filled with so much doubt. The world, with so much absurdity and misery, is a hard thing to deal with while trying to believe in a loving creator.
Without a God, life is pretty much meaningless. We simply become chemical reactions driven by sunlight just trying to survive as long as possible. The "soul" is just the firing of neurons in the brain. Love is just something to assist in the mating process. Put simply, life just becomes a waste of time without God.
I think of all the order and beauty in the world and I can't help but think that there is a greater order or meaning. This thing around me, and my life, cannot just be a random machination in a grand sea of chaos. DNA is so so complicated. The machinery of life is beyond complex. I want to just succumb to it, and believe that I matter.
As close as I can come, I am sidetracked by so so many things. The thought of a person changing because of chemical or injury. How permanent can the soul really be if we are so fragile that our very identities are subject to our physicality. Life, it seems, is cheap and perhaps getting cheaper. So many people kill and are killed for meaningless things that I wonder why God sits idle. The crusades, the holocaust, all the wars, and all the needless pain and suffering in the world makes no sense. It all seems so absurd.
A friend of mine once said that "the ways of God are not the ways of man". Can light exist without dark. Can we truly be happy without knowing sadness?
What is my point with all this? I want to have faith. I want to know that my life and the lives around me matter. I want to just live knowing that we are more than atoms.
I welcome any and all comments on this, be it in this forum or in person.
Sincerely,
bobby
