A life less ordinary

Dear Jesus,
I was reading an interview today with Jim Cameron the movie director, who is coming out with his newest blockbuster next week. In the interview he said something that echoes what I believe deep down inside, and what I sometimes try to make myself forget. He was talking about his youth and how he got into movies and his reputation for being a real hard ass, and in one of his responses he said “Most people waste their lives on mundane bullshit.” And the truth is, for the most part I think he is right.

But it’s not just simply us wasting our lives by sitting in front of the TV everyday after we get out of our 9-5 that we most of the time hate. No, there’s more to what he said than that and while he may not have meant it in a spiritual manner, you can and should apply that perspective to his statement. By interpreting his statement in a spiritual context, it has even more profound implications. How so? Because if we are to take seriously the basic precepts of what all of our faiths are saying, regardless of religion, and look at ourselves and our lives in relation to what out faiths are trying to tell us, I think most of us would see a great disparity. I for one readily admit that I’m not my brother’s keeper, that I don’t serve God by serving others, that my life is not about spreading charity and love and hope. And I honestly don’t have a good reason why it’s not. Oh I can say “I have a family that I need to support, a mortgage I need to pay” but I know that’s an excuse because I now in my heart i can do both.

I think we get so caught up in the way this society functions, in the routine of everyday life, that we often forget to live. I know I do. It’s so easy to fall into working day in and day out and not see that life is for living, that God wants us to live fully and to experience the wonder and mystery of it all, and to love and serve each other, for by doing so we love and serve God. This society is not conducive to that. It’s conducive to us being slaves to the machine, to thinking that we need all this material stuff to be happy, to thinking that achievement is where we find our identity or esteem. It’s conducive to stress, anxiety and heart attacks. It’s conducive to unhappy marriages, neglected children and dysfunctional people. It’s conducive to forgetting about God and each other. Most of us waste our lives on mundane bullshit that in the end means nothing and has robbed us of our lives, our minds and our hearts. Robbed us of our relationships, loves and joys. Robbed us of our experience of God. And the worst part about it all is that it is usually with our permission.

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear the little voice in the back of my head that says “the work that you do everyday is, in the end, meaningless. Your life is meant for so much more. You have a higher purpose than to just do what you’re doing now, but you need to choose it”. And yet I continue to do the same thing over and over everyday. “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” That line in the Pink Floyd song always gets me wondering when I’ll be brave enough to make a change, or at least do something in addition to what I’m doing that makes a difference in my life, to find more meaning, to serve God by serving others. It doesn’t mean I just up and quit everything and become a monk, but it does mean I need to make the effort to find and act on something that serves something other than myself. By doing this I will bring a deeper meaning to my life, and closer communion to God, and the sense of feeling like I’m wasting my life on mundane bullshit will disappear because while I may not be making blockbuster movies or traveling the planet full time, I will be able to find contentment and feel settled within, in the knowledge that I’m serving God by serving others.