Organic food and foreign cars.
I don't believe the price of gold;
The certainty of growing old.
That right is right and left is wrong,
That north and south can't get along.
That east is east and west is west.
And being first is always best.
. . .
Well, I don't believe that heaven waits,
For only those who congregate.
I like to think of God as love:
He's down below, He's up above.
He's watching people everywhere.
He knows who does and doesn't care.
And I'm an ordinary man,
Sometimes I wonder who I am.
-from "I Believe in You" (Don Williams)
My worldview is insubstantial.
However, five years ago I decided to break ground, creating my own forum to share many of my insignificant thoughts and ideas. Gazing at my arbitrary tags on this blog would offer far more perspective on what matters to me than could any staid belief system checklist. At 100 posts, introspection wins out. Varying degrees of art, delusions of life, and musings on family and friends are not far behind. This sounds about right. These are the things that fuel me, drive me forward, and demand my concern.
Frequently I drive around, noting the bumper stickers people decide to attach to their vehicles. The more you look, the more often you discover that people become a certain collection of thoughts. I feel that people get so quickly swooped into an agenda and a set of ideals. It's one of the reasons I loathe so much politics and the structure of political debate. People blindly stumble for the vernacular and position that suits others like them, often for fear of reprisal. I have spent many years exceedingly irked by people supposedly like me.
I grew up in an environment with parents who changed their political party based on their opinion of the man in the Oval Office and who seemed to use God and religion to prove a point. As a formative structure, it doesn't surprise me in the least that most of my life has been far more replete with questions than with answers. I still think it's important to question and to grapple with ideas. However, I don't take it for granted that I feel far more centered than I ever have in the past. Any of us can say what's important until we're blue in the face, but actually following through with those same ideals is more powerful than the claim.
I remember a very uncomfortable car ride with my brother more than ten years ago. Our opportunities to interact have been staggered over time and he chose this moment to get caught up with me. So, he ran through a bevy of discussion topics like God, death penalty, abortion, and homosexuality. I don't know if I believe these to be the rubric on which one can base their knowledge of another. I think life is much more basic than that, and I choose to connect with people instead of divide myself from them.
I don't care about politics. I have never protested or picketed, but I have signed petitions to whose enactment I might otherwise disagree, because it jived with the party line. These days I am happily less than political and feel far more myself because of it.
What's important is love. I don't care how trite that may sound. From within all of us are a deep swelling of positivity and genuine love that when shared and allowed to ripple from being to being can have the most profound effect. Maybe it's God. Maybe it's indigestion. There are innumerable sorts and ways of expressing it. All I know is I find it impossible to argue with the existence of it, and of any of my beliefs that I hold close and often won't reveal, it's the only one I want to impart and impose on others.
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