Feelings

Feelings are such fickle things. There are rare days when I just love my life. The world is a beautiful place in which to live, and I feel blessed beyond measure. I feel connected - connected to nature, to the people in my life, to God, and the universe as a whole. I feel ALIVE and I think I finally grasp what Jesus was talking about when He said He would give us abundant life. Unfortunately, that glorious feeling never lasts. Most days are just ho-hum, filled with routine maintenance. ( I read somewhere that life is 90% maintenance.)

Then there are the bad days. Those are the times when I feel disgusted with today's world and find no joy in living in it. I feel contempt for the culture that surrounds and overwhelms me. The future looks bleak and foreboding, and I feel sorry for anyone bringing a child into such a society. Don't get me wrong; I'm not suicidal or anything like that. (I read just last night that midlife is when you decide not to kill yourself because you realize you're going to die anyway!) No, I just feel sad and disgusted with the world in general. Last night I was feeling in this dark mood, and I now feel inspired to wallow in it as I try to describe just what goes on in my mind when I feel this way. What, exactly, causes such dark emotions?

Is it just getting older? Am I just missing my youth and mourning the loss of the world I knew back then? Maybe all over-fifty folks look around and see a world they don't recognize anymore. I guess I'm not very comfortable in modern-day society. Is it just me, or are there things fundamentally wrong with how we live now? Yes, some things are wrong. They just have to be.

There are times when I feel that everything I believe, value, and have based my life on is under assault. Morality steadily declines, excellence isn't cool, religion fades in its influence on our public lives. Bookstores are filled with "new" revelations about the Bible, and people flock to see a movie about Jesus' supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene. No one cares about the blaspheme of portraying Superman as the Savior of the world in another movie. Madonna has the adacity to sing while hanging on a cross.

Marriages fall apart all around me. I watch the lives of kids I love being wrecked along with their parents' marriages. Children break their parents' hearts by following after the world and all it has to offer. Families are scattered and pulled apart by the culture.

We live to be entertained. American Idol contestants receive more votes than any presidential candidate ever received. More young people recognize movie and TV figures than they do the vice-president. They can sing the lyrics of countless songs, recount the biographies of their favorite stars, and cite all kinds of statistics about sports, but find it "too hard" to memorize the facts of history and literature.

Even the "news" shows go on ad nauseum about celebrities and the trivia of their lives. I was struck with the absurdity of it all when I heard, for the fifth time that day, the news report of Brittany Spears tripping and ALMOST dropping her baby. Somehow the fact that she DIDN'T drop the baby failed to prevent the incident from becoming news. I guess that's what happens when a news channel has to fill twenty-four hours a day with something, whether it's news or not. Then I was struck with how stupid I was to still be listening to such drivel! It's time I get over my CNN addiction, born during the first Gulf War. Hey, maybe that's where the dark feelings come from!!!

For some reason, it matters to people whether or not Brittany Spears is a good mother more than it matters that countless children are seriously abused every day in this country. Go figure. Who can you blame for such nonsense? I blame society for being so celebrity-obsessed and the news media for catering to the lowest common denominator instead of getting out there and investigating and reporting on the things that really matter. Ratings rule. But, as John Stossel says, the "media doesn't have a clue." Which is pretty scary when you consider that it provides most of the information we have about the world in which we live.

Too much information. Maybe that's the problem. We know more than any generation ever has and have access to much of the world's knowledge with just the click of a mouse. But the more we learn, the more confused we are. So much of the information out there is conflicting. Which information is true? Which information even matters? Who can we trust to tell us what we really need to hear? And it keeps changing!!! Which is it - lowfat or low carbohydrate? Margarine or butter? Does caffeine cause cancer or prevent it? Who cares anymore?

We have five hundred channels on our televisions and still can't find anything worth watching. Try to find something, and you'll see nothing but commercials on almost every channel, designed to convince us that we can't live without something that didn't even exist yesterday. Our excessive consumerism is another thing that depresses me about our world, especially when I find myself so caught up in it.

So we live to be entertained and consume. It's all so shallow and meaningless. We fill our weekends with movies, concerts, ballgames, shopping and eating out while Africa is dying from aids, civil war, and famine. Something inside tells us it shouldn't be that way so an underlying feeling of guilt dulls the pleasure we get from our self-serving activities. We know all that suffering is out there, but feel we can't do anything about it, so we might as well put it out of our minds. We have truly become a society that "majors in the minors and minors in the majors."

I'm as guilty as anyone. I have a closet full of clothes and still can't find anything to wear to graduation tonight. I get obsessed with decorating my house and fixing up the yard. I try to alleviate my self-centered behavior by dropping money in the offering plate. I avoid reading my Bible so I won't feel guilty about all the things I should be doing but am not. I start all my sentences with "I."

OK, enough. I've wallowed enough for the day. Next time I will try to write happier thoughts, but as I said, feelings are fickle things, and who knows what feelings will envelop me today?