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Hope, Awe, and Wonder
Rather than launching into industry news after a month of minding my own business (and neglecting to post here), I thought I'd write a little bit about some thoughts I've been having this holiday season in relation to my own personal mythology (i.e. religion).
Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend about the futility of the universe -- the idea that, eventually, it's likely to all draw back in on itself, thus erasing everything that has gone on before and reducing humanity to a footnote of the universe (if anything in the universe is taking notes). I don't remember it that's the current popular theory for the end of the universe -- there's another one that we'll expand indefinitely, as I recall, but I've long since stopped worrying about the end of everything, as I won't be around to see it. What the conversation ended up coming around to was whether or not anything humanity did mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and whether there was any hope. I said, "I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think it's just in my nature to hope."
There is power in hope -- something supported by science as well as by common/folk wisdom. My sister recently visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a friend of Frank's said at one point that Frank thought all her family members were dead. The friend believed that if Frank had known her father was alive, she would have survived -- but she'd lost all hope. If she'd known that the concentration camp where she was located would be liberated in two days, might she have made it? I suspect so, because I think hope gives people a reason to hold on, even when they don't precisely know what they're hoping for.
I was a reader for our Christmas Eve church service out here, and one of the passages I read was from Luke 2 -- the story of the shepherds. I've sung it before from Handel's Messiah, and I had to focus on the translation I'd been instructed to read in order to avoid the "sore afraid"s and the "And lo!"s. Reading it aloud this year made me think about how a lot of my world-view ends up being rather like the way the shepherds react after they leave the manger scene: they are full of awe, wonder, and hope.
At the end of all things, will any of what we've experienced here have mattered? Will it have had any meaning bigger than just the components? I can't guarantee it, but I believe that, in some grand scheme of things, our experiences matter and our stories matter. And I can't help thinking that it's much nicer to be filled with hope that to not have any at all.
Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend about the futility of the universe -- the idea that, eventually, it's likely to all draw back in on itself, thus erasing everything that has gone on before and reducing humanity to a footnote of the universe (if anything in the universe is taking notes). I don't remember it that's the current popular theory for the end of the universe -- there's another one that we'll expand indefinitely, as I recall, but I've long since stopped worrying about the end of everything, as I won't be around to see it. What the conversation ended up coming around to was whether or not anything humanity did mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and whether there was any hope. I said, "I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think it's just in my nature to hope."
There is power in hope -- something supported by science as well as by common/folk wisdom. My sister recently visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a friend of Frank's said at one point that Frank thought all her family members were dead. The friend believed that if Frank had known her father was alive, she would have survived -- but she'd lost all hope. If she'd known that the concentration camp where she was located would be liberated in two days, might she have made it? I suspect so, because I think hope gives people a reason to hold on, even when they don't precisely know what they're hoping for.
I was a reader for our Christmas Eve church service out here, and one of the passages I read was from Luke 2 -- the story of the shepherds. I've sung it before from Handel's Messiah, and I had to focus on the translation I'd been instructed to read in order to avoid the "sore afraid"s and the "And lo!"s. Reading it aloud this year made me think about how a lot of my world-view ends up being rather like the way the shepherds react after they leave the manger scene: they are full of awe, wonder, and hope.
At the end of all things, will any of what we've experienced here have mattered? Will it have had any meaning bigger than just the components? I can't guarantee it, but I believe that, in some grand scheme of things, our experiences matter and our stories matter. And I can't help thinking that it's much nicer to be filled with hope that to not have any at all.