(adapted from a post I ran in 2008 on a different blog)
You know God, it’s funny. I originally started a different blog in hopes I could add to our college fund for the kids, knowing that what we had already saved was wiped out on 9/11 and the latest economic down-slide. Oh the blog ran google ads and ranted about everything. Well, jokes on me God, that didn’t pan out. I didn’t hit it big like a tiny percentage does.
But it’s funny because in the process I’ve gained much more… I began to meet people through blogging. Combine that with starting my own personal journey, everything suddenly started coming together. (except the financial part, lol. ) I’ve met so many people from all walks of life, many countries and many religions.
Let me tell you about what I’ve learned about people since I’ve been blogging and how I’m applying this in my own life. You see, I’ve always been on a never-ending quest to ‘find myself’, to understand ‘the evolution of me’. What makes me tick, what makes me… me. To sit in silence and know who is in my skin. To learn about the world, the universe and in the process learn about me. I’m glad so far that’s it is ‘never ending’, because if it ended… um… I guess that would mean I’d be… uh, dead. And I’m just too busy to die right now, I’ve got wayyyy to many things to do.
Thru blogging, I’ve met Christians, and Mormons, and Pagans, and Buddhists, Muslims, Agnostics and Jews (sounds like that one song about a puppet, a poet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn and a king) Anyhow… I find it to be the most incredible experience to have been able to have crossed paths with all these different people.
Sooo many people that I otherwise would have never met in this lifetime. Some I find a common interest with, some nothing at all in common. Sometimes I find a laugh or shed a tear, feel consoled or try to console another. Other times I come across something I was just contemplating which makes it a bit strange, as if fate had pointed me in that direction.
I’ve seen the world through the beautiful eyes of these people, through their incredible lens, their wonderful hearts. It’s very uplifting. It’s as if we are all intertwined in some big ball of string sharing a turn at untying a knot.
From dealing with illness to disabilities to depression, people losing long time jobs and spouses going off to war. To see people who are living on the streets… well… suddenly… complaining about my heating bill seems stupid. I’ve learned that sometimes my trivial concerns are just that, trivial.
So here’s all these different people, that I know in real life, and ‘internet life’… and all these different beliefs and I just can’t help but wonder what your ‘take’ is on all this. I wonder how you feel about so many people believing so many different things, all in your name… believing they are the ‘right ones’. I guess it’s sorta like parents having a bunch of kids and they all think that mom ‘likes them best’.
Now, for me, I was born into one religion, raised in another, and now…I’m feeling a lot like there isn’t one ‘right’ one. That everyone is somehow finding their way by taking a different path. We’ll all meet up in the same place in the end but how we get there is entirely up to the individual. I completely admire people who have a deep devotion to their organized religions… yet for myself I’m going to take the path of looking more… within.
I guess the first step in ‘the evolution of me’ is to actually say that out loud. I cannot fathom the idea that ANY of these wonderful people all over the world (or myself for that matter) are somehow ‘wrong’. I prefer to believe that we’re all right in some aspect and wrong in others. Who knows. (well, I mean, except You, of course)
I’ll tell ya God, it’s pretty cool that something so impersonal such as a computer… a cold piece of equipment… can bring the world together in such fine fashion. To mix and mingle and see people you would have never met otherwise. To be touched by and to touch others.
Blogging is a “b-e-a-utiful” thing! And… if I find a part of ‘me’ along the way, that’s even more sweeter! You can’t put a price tag on this experience.
That’s it for now,
~Sheila
