As I expected, I am doing a rant today. One of the things that has sort of stuck out in my mind is how someone can believe something and shape many things in their life around it, but in fact, the entire thing could be a farce. If you believed in something and shaped your life based on that belief, and then found out that everything you had believed was a lie, would you still continue to live the same way? This rant analyzes such an experience of my own.
The most common example of this would be in the world of religion. Let? take a typical faith believer. Whether it?s Catholic, Baptist, or whatever, it doesn?t really matter. The fact is these people base their entire lives on the teachings of God & Jesus. They believe what the bible has told them and therefore they have adjusted their lives accordingly. They don?t swear. They don?t steal. They go to church every Sunday. They don?t cheat on their spouses. They treat others fairly and equally.
A lot of those qualities could describe what most people would consider a ?good? person. Someone who does not commit crime or is cruel to others would be considered ?good?. Now, if you are a follower of religion, you may have chosen to be a ?good? person because you believe that your good deeds would be rewarded when you die. You spend your whole life doing all of these ?good? things or maybe even just avoiding being ?bad? because God wants you to be good. In doing so, you lead a relatively good and normal life. You have healthy, educated children, and everything seems great.
By the time you reach retirement, technology has advanced far beyond what it was when you were growing up. You feel like you have done everything the way you were supposed to and are confident that when you die, God will reward you with eternal happiness in the kingdom of heaven. Sounds pretty good eh?
Now, what if after having lived your entire life believing in God, it was announced to the world that God had been proven to not exist. Say they built a time machine and went back in time and discovered that Jesus was really just an architect and the bible was a collection of fictional stories? What if the Pope himself declared to the world that Jesus & the entire Christian religion had been a farce? How would that now change your life?
Some would feel betrayed, like they had lived their entire life for nothing. How would you be different? Would you feel cheated, or would you be able to realize the true power that God had given you, regardless of the fact that he never existed?
I think I would feel two ways. I would feel somewhat cheated or as if I had been lied to and somewhat disappointed. However, I also think that I would be able to recognize the fact that what I got from living that way was more important than where those tales came from.
Think about it. If you spent your whole life helping people, being kind, and being a ?good? person, finding out that what you believed wasn?t true would not invalidate it at all. It would show you that you did all of this on your own. You did something to help yourself and others around you. Yes, you followed a book and did as it said, but you also now realize that the book was just a guide, and that no one out there was helping you. You just did it all on your own. I think I?d feel pretty good about it. You have to be able to realize that greater consequences of what you have done.
When I was growing up, I didn?t have a dad. I mean, my dad was alive but he wasn?t really a part of my life after the age of 11. When you hit the teens, you do some serious growing up and things in your life change. For myself, I had a very hard time when I was younger because of my small stature. So, in the long run, I had issues with self-esteem and really had a hard time just ?being myself?. It wasn?t until I got into my teens and later on that I really found out the kind of person I was.
All kids, in one form or another, have some sort of role model. Someone they look up to or want to try and emulate. In the perfect situations, that would be a parent, but many times, especially in today?s world, that can be difficult. Families are not as normal as they once were and a lot of kids are left out in the cold having no one to turn to.
A lot of kids will try to emulate or be a lot like someone they see on television. I remember as a teenager, I heard about this singer in a band who refused to do drugs or alcohol because most people use those to have something to blame their behavior on when they go out and act crazy and do stupid things. This singer said he?d rather stay sober and away from the junk, and still act crazy so he could at least remember it, and make fun of others who couldn?t remember. That stuck with me. It stuck so hard that to this day, I have never had a drop of alcohol or drugs in my system. I used that same logic to keep stuff out of my body while I was a teenager and believe me, I did enough weird things as a kid that I?m sure people thought I was out of it. But I was as clean as they got.
So as a teenager, I was so struck by this singer?s philosophy that I took it on myself and eventually found out who I really was. It wasn?t that I idolized or worshipped this person, but I just found that his logic made a lot of sense to me, so why not be the same way. Yes, in some ways I did emulate him, but regardless, it helped me form into the person I am now. It also helped me form some hella funny and awesome stories from my teenage and college years.
Eventually, I got older, and realized that I was doing things not because someone else was doing them, but because I wanted to. It had become part of me and I was ok with that. I liked it. I liked who I had become.
Some time in my late 20?s I found out that this same singer guy had done his share of drugs and alcohol like many people in the music scene did. Did that somehow invalidate the things I had learned and things I had done as a result of it? Not at all. In fact, I kind of chuckled and thought that it didn?t matter because the end result was I became someone I can be proud of. What I had heard as a kid must have just been gossip or something else, but at this point, it no longer mattered. I started out trying to emulate one person, and became someone else.
I guess the point of this rant is to show people that regardless of what you may believe, things change. You can live your whole life a certain way and ultimately, it is you that makes that decision. Whether your beliefs are based on fact or fiction, it really doesn?t matter because it is all about the result. How do your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings today, shape your life in the future? It?s kind of interesting to consider the possibilities.
So there. I?ve had my say!
