Photo courtesy of MSNBC.
Yesterday was spent at school with one of the most disillusioned groups of young men that I have ever met. Facing the class, I was confronted with the age-old question – “What’s the point?” And, you know, for some of these boys the imminent reality of being just a couple of months away from leaving school and entering the wider world ‘market’ is probably pretty damn scary.
While I am tempted to feel frustrated with such groups of boys, especially when their behaviour is disruptive of their classmates, or they are being point-blank rude to their teachers, I am apt to join some of my colleagues who also ask themselves that same question: “What’s the point?”
Upon arriving home yesterday, greeting my wife as she came in through the door some five minutes behind me, I was met with a question: “Have you heard what happened in Japan?”
I hadn’t.
Curiously, given the free availability of information via the TV, I clicked on the BBC News and sat down to watch.
Pictures of 13 feet high waves crashing across homes and farmland met my gaze. Bobbing – what was that? A crate? No – a car! Cars bobbing in the mass of water, swept away by the sheer force of nature… and look, there… one car with the rear windscreen wiper blade still working, evidence perhaps that the car was in use as the tsunami wave struck.
Numbed from the day and now struck dumb by the images, I sat in silence. Watching. Staring. Shaking my head in disbelief.
Numb.
This is not the first time I have seen such images. Sadly, as I watched, my heart did not know how to respond.
What’s the point?
27 disillusioned boys. Massive destruction of life due to earthquake and tsunami.
What brings these events together?
The answer lies within me. My experience. My own perception. And now, by the magic of blogging, the connection includes you.
You and me. We are connected by these events. As human beings, able to perceive and understand, think and feel, we connect these events.
More than that. though, you and I are considering the significance of it all. We might even find ourselves asking questions.
An arbitrary world?
Do we truly live within an arbitrary world in which ignorant and selfish young lads get to walk home safely, while thousands of hard-working and, arguably, more deserving Japanese citizens suffer and die? Is this truly just the inevitable, if unpredictable, outcome of tectonic rubbing in one part of the world being compared with the comfortable living of a lazy and ungrateful youth? Or does my perception of events allow for meaning?
I cannot help but imagine the masses of suffering people who, in the cold damp night in Japan might be silently or openly crying out for help. How many thousands are praying or calling for aid from beyond the realm of the physical and empirical? Are they wrong to do so? Is it all, as my lads would stridently declare, so very pointless?
In such a world there would surely be little room for hope.
And yet…
At last, as I type this, tears roll down my face. The emotion of the day, the sleepless night that led me to this moment… all of it wells and crashes over me.
For me, sitting here in the dark and yet safe home that still stands around me, I realise that the meaning of all that suffering might do well to start inside of my heart.
Perhaps, even if there is no external point, no grand plan or reason for that suffering… perhaps meaning can be born within your and my hearts. As we suffer quietly from all these thousands of miles away, struck dumb by the horror of the loss of so many fellow human beings, perhaps here in the human heart we can ascribe meaning to their deaths.
If only we are struck humble, encouraged to be grateful, given pause for thought in appreciation of all that we have randomly received. If only this heart is moved then perhaps, in what might be just a single huge act of hubris and egotism, there might be born a meaning to all that has happened.
After all… it’s not as if you or I really matter. Is it..?
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