cogs in the machine

When I went to Wisconsin in October of last year, I was talking to a nice lady who was asking all about life in Cincinnati. I gave her the scoop, how I went to college and graduated and lived at home for a while doing coffee and then moved down to Cincinnati to do coffee at a different place. 

I really liked her because she didn't ask what everyone else asks: "Why aren't you doing ministry?"

She said I seemed joyful and content doing what I was doing, and that's what matters, but I'm quite certain that the "joyfulness" and "contentment" I had was due to something entirely different. I'm not sure if I'm either of those things, at least consistently, but it was refreshing to see that not everyone buys into the idea that our worth is dependent upon our degrees, the prestige of our careers, or the figures on our bank accounts. 

Amos and I were talking just the other day 'bout where our lives are going. Basically just a bunch of fools talking about things way over their heads, daring to estimate what our lives will look like ten years down the road. I've generally stopped doing such guesswork, because not one of my guesses about what my life would like  at age 25 came true. I wagered I'd be married, maybe have a kid, working at a small church in a small town. It didn't work out that way, and I can't be mad about it: I was dumb enough in the first place to even try and decipher the future. Amos observed, "I'm not special, I'm not unique, I'm just a cog in the machine like everyone else." He's right: that's all Amos is. And that's all I am, and that's all you are. We're told we're special, that we have some sort of purpose transcending the day-to-day grind of real life, that we're somehow a cut above the rest. I'm sorry, but that's not true. In the telescopic scheme of things, we're nobodies. Flowers quickly fading, numbers on a quickly-yellowing sheet, and when we die, we're soon forgotten as the sun rises and sets in its unbroken and unsympathetic rhythm.