An old eclectic rant I dug up:
There wasn't enough time. It was always this nagging feeling that wrapped around itself in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that even though I had more than enough time to do what I needed, somehow there just wasn't. I couldn't help but feel that I must have been forgetting something, something terribly important. Why else would I feel this sense of impending dread. The problem was, when I would stop and try to figure out what it was, it only got worse. So I kept busy, pushing myself into whatever caught my attention, burying myself into my work and school, trying to burrow so deeply that all I could think about was the assignments I had piling up around me.
That is how I have lived my life, minute by minute, day by day, measuring each moment by what obligation was next most pressing. I had made myself so many goals that people I use to know simply shook their heads at me and hurried on by. I barely even noticed anymore. My arms were always filled with books and papers, earphones glued to my head in a vain attempt to balance out the stress with soothing music, constantly muttering formulas or items off my To-Do list under my breath.
Occasionally there would be times that my attention would be caught by something outside the hectic little world that I had created for myself. The first sunrise of the season over the tops of my dorm building, or a particular song I happened to come upon; My sister calling from her college could sometimes do it, although those calls were mainly dominated by schoolwork as well, and occasionally I would simply stop, in mid-rush between here and there, for no reason at all and simply have to marvel at the world around me, nothing in particular, just all of it.
His face was the closest I ever came to figuring out what it was that felt so empty in me, where it was that urgency about time was coming from.
I don't think that I will ever believe all the hype and stories about him, and I will never be able to simply sit back and allow anyone to tell me about him as if they had known him themselves. I'll never know where he really came from, or why he was really there, or even who he really was, but something about him, the only thing about him, that has ever, or will ever seem to have been true about him, that is portrayed correctly after all this time, is something about the picture of him up there. I don't believe what they say about why he is up there, I don't believe how they say he got up there, but I do believe that he cared. He may never have truly been there, it might just be another mis-told story, but I believe that he cared, and that is all that mattered. Not what he did, not how he did it, just that he was able to feel, and he was able to love, even if just one person. I can believe that he was a person, that this image, this story, it is based on someone who lived, someone who was the right person at the right time to give hope and healing to a people when they needed it most.
So many people look up at him in awe, seeing him as if some ethereal being; would he want this, as the normal person he was, if a bit advanced for his time, would he want to be put up on a godly pedestal with the expectations of thousands to live up to? I know I wouldn't, even if just because it is too easy for worshipers to turn on the ideals and they 'believe' in. I prefer to think that he would like, instead, simply to be remembered as a person, if remembered at all, who strove to be the best he could, and to make a difference. And so I look at him and think, "this man cared, and did all he could to help all the people he could. This man, was a good man, a normal man whose acts of kindness will be remembered, if incorrectly, throughout the course of human history." And I realize, that through all my fears of dying and that being THE end, completely and totally...acts of kindness, acts of true self, no matter how small, will be everyone's legacy.
All of a sudden, while I still can't prescribe to their faith, I feel a little less lost, and a little more confident in myself and the future.
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