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Are we getting it yet?
Are you still enthralled with your favorite hero? Is it Clay Matthews or LeBron James? Is it Wayne Gretzky or Miguel Cabrera? You do realize they are humans and they are flawed don’t you?
Lance Armstrong is so flawed he deserves to be in his own hall of fame of worst possible human being in the entire 20th and 21st century. I mean, he stands back and admits to all the things he’s been accused of for years, without batting an eye, oblivious EMOTIONALLY to all the pain he has caused others. He’s a sociopath, and in another life would be a mass murderer. Instead he’s just a mass cheater, liar, and life wrecker.
Manti Ta’o? The kid from Notre Dame with the strange story about the girlfriend he had never met and may never have existed? Oh, I have no clue if Manti was in on the hoax or a victim of it. Having spend more hours than I wish to admit to on the old IRC back in the day, I know so many stories like this that I’m inclined to give the kid the benefit of the doubt. I knew people who feel deeply in love with personas that were not even close to truth. I knew men who fell in love with men who thought they were women. Truly it happens. Or it did. . . . back in the day at least.
Never happened to me. Back before the Contrarian, I met a lot of men via the Internet, and physically met close to a half dozen. They were all who they purported to be. I was lucky I guess. I met the Contrarian via the Internet, and in a display of utter dumbness, or incredibly acute intuition, gave up my apartment and hired a moving company before I had laid eyes on the man. But we are now into thirteen years of marriage, and a happy one at that. Don’t use me as measure however of the safety of this medium of communication. I am quite sure if you x-ray my skull, you will find the alien implant that suggests I’m just on loan from Planet Glix for an earthly experiment. I think my real occupation, when not being a test subject (think 2 years government service equivalency), is as an online psychic charlatan on the run from three known law suits, and three hybrid brides who were left at the altar.
See, that stuff floats through my head, and just must be when the old implant goes into a defib mode for a few seconds.
Anyway, either Manti or Lance serve once again to remind us that we should never place our adoration at the foot of most any human, for they are just always going to disappoint you in the end by being ALL TOO HUMAN. Or maybe less human in the case of Lance.
Which begs the question, where does one lay one’s adoration? Some find elegance in the medium of mathematics, and indeed I can appreciate the elegance of that. Or the universe itself which has a majesty that is enough for 3,000 lifetimes. One can find enough to adore in the soft breathing of a newborn, a new-born of any species actually. Awe is part of adoration after all, and life awes.
I find a single dandelion growing through the crack in an old sidewalk worthy of adoration. After all, talk about tenacity. Tenacity seems worthy of adoration.
So symmetry, the miracle of life, and tenacity are in the mix. How about longevity?
There is much to be admired in a face like this. A worn face, a face that has worked, loved, cried, laughed, and somehow continued on.
Eyes that hold a library full of stories.
Hands that have caressed a woman’s cheek and then tightened around a wrench and heaved loose a nut.
Shall we trip the light fantastic and delve into the realm of mystery? Shall we glimpse the ineffable, the transcendent? Are we not in the place of adoration?
Shall we imagine the temperatures and pressures that brought into being the pebble that you walk upon? That came from the rock, that came from the mountain, long broken and sunk back into the landscape? Adore it?
Did all this start in a giggle of a thought about Mitt Romney and his reference to liking “sport” instead of “sports?”
Can we adore the mind that can move across such distance of space and subject, and still remain stable enough to shop for groceries and watch 30Rock?
You tell me.
Existential Ennui 