As I was taking a shower today, I started thinking about what I want to do with my life. I will be going to college soon, and will have to decide what I want to study and what career I would like to pursue. But one thought led to another, and I found myself thinking about some very strange questions. This is my attempt at recreating my train of thought.
First I thought about my past. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a scientist. As I grew up, I realized that I wanted to study physics. I wanted to know how the world worked. I was not satisfied with getting an ordinary job, or studying something practical. I didn't worry about whether I would even be able to get a job. I just wanted to KNOW. Physics allowed me to see the world through different eyes. The more I understood, the more beautiful the world was to me. A man that I have the utmost respect for (you might have heard his name before in a science class or seen him in a picture sticking his tongue out) can sum up everything that I believed my life was about in a few sentences: "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."
However, today I had thoughts that were deeper than this. I used to think that studying physics and gaining this deep understanding were the best thing to do with my life. By best, I mean it would make me feel like my life has some importance, like I would be able to leave something behind. Like somewhere, to someone - maybe the little guy upstairs - it mattered that I discovered his thoughts. All my life I thought there was nothing more pure and noble and good than to learn the secrets of the universe. But why? What can come of this?
If physicists were to unify classical mechanics with quantum theory, what would come of it? Will it answer why we are here? No. What good will come of seeing what God thought? We can know how to create wormholes and warp drives and lasers. We can know what is inside a black hole and how to travel in and out of one. But so what? What will this knowledge do other than fuel human ambition? What will the knowledge to enable intergalactic travel do other than spread war and chaos. Everywhere we humans have gone we have destroyed and caused major change. I always wanted to study the beautiful laws of nature, but the truth is that humans destroy or bring chaos to everything natural that there is.
What is the point then? What is the point of attempting to understand God's creation? I am so confused. Are there no higher workings that could I can hope to understand. Is it then that the place of men is to stay within the realm of men and not wonder beyond that?
So many things that we want to know, but there is SO LITTLE that I can attempt to understand, regardless of my ambitions. I cannot see His thoughts. Why did he make us? All that we do is fight. If we don't, we cause chaos. Have you ever noticed that what most entertains us is war? People don't bring two dogs together to watch them play and be friends, they do it to watch them fight. We don't put two roosters near each other to watch them cluck but to see them tear each other apart. And we don't put two men in a ring to watch them socialize but the beat to bloody life out of each other.
When I was little I asked why God created us, and I remember someone told me it was because he wanted company. But if he wanted company why would he created something that does not cease to spread war and chaos. What if he wasn't lonely, but bored? What if he wants us to have war (because he knew we would, after all). What if God is just another man. What if he is a Big man who simply wants to see a good fight? We always depict him as looking somewhat like we did, so why couldn't he be just another man, but a bit bigger.
These conclusions are troubling. Could there be another answer? We don't just destroy. We also create. We search for answers. One of man's greatest creations, the Large Hadron Collider, was made to search for answers, like the "God" particle (Higgs Boson). Maybe God didn't make us to watch a good fight. What if he made us to search? To search for him; to search for answers. Not just for ourselves. Maybe he has questions too. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Maybe he created us to help him search for the answers to these questions. We say he knows all but maybe he is just as confused as we are, and wants some help.
I have reached a dead end, again. My thoughts can take me no further at the moment. There is so much to think about. Am I going crazy? Do other people think about these things? My shampoo has completely washed off. What will I do with my life? Could be satisfied with a future that has less questions, and less dead ends; where most things are clear. I have found that working in manual labor, while physically taxing, gives me tremendous peace of mind. There is no place that I feel more comfortable and relaxed than when I go to work in construction with my dad. Would construction suit me? Maybe farming, I would like to try that one day. It's too early to make decisions, I haven't had time to reflect on these thoughts. They are pretty out of the ordinary, and maybe there's nothing to them. Just random thoughts to keep me entertained while I shower. Well I'm completely dry now so I'm off to watch some TV, I'll think about the future some other time.
P.S. While reviewing this post another thought popped into my head. It is in the paragraph about God creating us to look for answers. I pondered: what if it's not just that he has questions, but that he doesn't know much more about anything in reality than we do? I mean, we are His creations. Maybe we are just thoughts in his head. Does he know why the wind blows? Or the theory behind black holes? Perhaps to say that he "knows all" isn't where we should leave it. It's true, he might know everything that is HAPPENING, but can he understand it anymore than we can? Are we able to give a scientific explanation for every occurence in our dreams? As a final thought, perhaps all we can say about this existence is that this is His world, and we're just living in it. And he may not understand it any better than its inhabitants do.
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