Purpose

I don’t know what the purpose is of writing in a blog.  I don’t need a place to write; I journal almost daily for my own records and edification.  I don’t need to use a website to tell my closest friends what is important to me; I use email or phone calls to do that.  And while I care generically about humanity in general, I don’t know what “they” need, so I don’t know what I can offer to help them.

My whole life I’ve been a big fish in a little pond.  I was the firstborn… of two children.  People called me the smartest kid in my class… in a tiny country school.  My songs and communion meditations have made a positive contribution… in a church of about 150. 

People have always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, but I didn’t want to aspire to anything in particular.  I didn’t want to stick my neck out there and risk anything, because I might find out that I wasn’t such a big fish after all.  I might have my identity pulled out from underneath me if I exercised any appreciable ambition.  So I stayed in my little pond.

Now I’m trying to anticipate and short-circuit that letdown.  It doesn’t matter what someone thought about me in the past, the comparisons they made between me and others in this or that context.  In the grand scheme of things, I’m a small fish.  (Those are kind of hard words to write.)  There is nothing about me that is inherently worthy of fame or acclaim.

But I’ve tried to align my life, my thinking, my choices, with what really exists.  I’ve tried my amateur level best to make sense of what I’ve observed and experienced, both inside and outside of me.  I’ve learned a few things.  I can post some of those lessons publicly.  And maybe a few of those lessons and observations might help someone else out there.  Hopefully that's purpose enough.