Meaningless....meaningless....

There are so many things in this world that are completely meaningless - stuff that will not matter one iota at the end of it all. This past Friday, people lined up for hours in the US to spend money they didn't have on junk they didn't need. Moms and dads are waiting like a circle of lions at the gazelles' watering hole, waiting to pounce, outside of toy stores to get this year's "It" toy - a toy that their kids will likely play with for a few days (if they are lucky) before discarding it onto the pile of toys in the corner of their bedroom.

At Matthew's school, they had tryouts for a floor hockey team at school, and the competitiveness and elitism of the whole thing just sickens me. Matthew is small and not a hockey player, and would prefer to cheer on everyone as the puck rolls by him. It wasn't a surprise when he didn't make the team, but I still felt bad. HE didn't care (at least he said he didn't), but I felt bad - so bad that I bought him a cool bionicle, and while I told him it was because of his great report card (which was great, mind you), it was really so he'd play with it all weekend and forget about floor hockey.

It's great that Matthew doesn't really care, but I think what bothers me is that someday he WILL care, and then what? Do I want him to be at a school that appears to only care about who wins Cross Country and who was on the Floor Hockey team? I guess school was always that way, which is probably why I was dreaming about my high school last night. The cool kids were the jocks, and I was a jock, but didn't hang out with the cool kids (I thought they were a bunch of morons). But still, most kids DO care and that's how they get into trouble. When kids care more about the clothes they are wearing and whether the cool kids give them the time of day, they start getting into trouble. I used to think it would be neat to have "cool kids", but what happens to those kids after high school? Not much, I'm guessing in a lot of cases.

And so I've been thinking about Solomon a lot lately, and his words in Ecclesiates, the words that captured my attention on Mother's Day 2007. It's so depressing, this world of ours, and we need to find some meaning in a world that seems void of values and genuine good. But how do we find that meaning when those closest to us don't even seem to care?