I kept thinking about this question after
last week's show. I barely watch Grey's anymore, but I found this episode thoughtful and compelling. What is more important these days: love or skill?
I've always been a personal level, choose happiness person. If you don't know how you get your happiness, how do you choose? Or, if your choice seems less than acceptable to other people, how do you explain that to yourself AND to others?
I'm a hausfrau. A mom. I was talking to my friend last night and she asked my what I had done that day. The sum total was quite a lot of nothingness. I had not achieved any great task or even contributed to the world or my community in any small way--unless you count spending money and supporting the economy a contribution.
The sum total of my life is really insignificant. As a mom, I'm not out curing cancer or saving any endangered species. I'm not strapping myself to historic buildings and fighting the bulldozers of capitalism. I guess if I had enough energy, passion and drive I might be.
This leads back to my husband and I visiting the
British Museum. We scanned eons of culture in a matter of hours.
Think you've got a lot of stuff? Remember when they say you can't take it with you? Well, you simply can't. There were jewels and coins and clothes and art and coffins and fancy stuff that wasn't going anywhere. Even the bodies were captured and on display in glass tombs that seemed almost crass and inhumane.
How about the guy who took someone else's coffin, scratched out the original owner's name and put his own on it? That can't be good afterlife karma. What does this say about anyone? The only thing he took with him to the after world was shame....or curiousity...or what was he thinking??? I've thought about this nameless-to-me man quite a lot.
Flash to post museum drinks with friends in the bar. This was quite a wealthy group friends. After a few drinks, I was going on and on about how money doesn't mean anything. Possessions don't mean anything. We all die and that's it. Basically, I told them all the meaning of life, and it wasn't working like dogs to make the next mil.
I am married to a man who works like the devil is chasing him. He fraternizes with men that also have the devil chasing after them. We live in a place where the devil is chasing the whole community all of the time, intensely and if different ways.
This makes me ask, who are you and who are your devils? Is it aging? Is it fading beauty? Is it regret? Is it something that you can't even put into words?
Yes, I'm a fun party guest, as you can tell. I was a heavy-thinking travel companion on this trip. I don't want to think of myself as a downer, but where are we going and how are we getting there and when? Is it the arrival or the journey? Is it skills and professions that define us? Is it love?
I feel very lucky to have an abundance of love in my life and can't see living a life where this wouldn't exist. If you haven't guessed, I'm in the love category.
Purpose exists for different people in different ways. I guess that's why some of us sign up to sing Wheels on the Bus with 2 year olds, some of us drive the bus and others become surgeons. It takes all types, and wouldn't the world be a boring place without us all?
