THAT EXPLAINS IT ALL

Ever wonder why we human beings can sometimes be so smart, do so much, be so intelligent that it often staggers the imagination? Every time I look around, it almost seems that there is another newer and better and faster technological gadget on the market. My first cell phone years ago had more computer stuff than the Apollo astronauts had. My new phone is a less than a year old and it is behind the times.

That is only for starters. One only wonders what will be next so smart are we. And then, at the same time, we have to wonder why we same human beings can do some of the dumbest and most foolish things. We make serious decisions often on the spur of the moment and live to regret what we’ve done, regret it for a long, long time. We all have skeletons in our closets we had to hide there out of sight and out of mind because we did not want to be continually faced with our foolish past actions.

So why do we very smart human beings often do what is quite foolish, what we would not do had we given some thought ahead of time? Mark Twain had the answer. “Man was made at then end of the week, when God was tired,” he opined. Sounds like a plausible explanation to me given that I know I make foolish and rash decisions when I am tired, when I should have waited, that I do not do my best when I am exhausted.

Tongue in cheek or not, Twain was on to something there. Of course, no matter when we were created, we would still do what is unwise and foolish, free will being what it is. That being a given, something else Twain observed goes hand-in-hand with our ability and proclivity to do the foolish after which we often grieve over our mistakes. We grieve alone because we are not going to find a sympathetic ear. We made our bed freely even if foolishly. No one is going to join us in it just to ease our guilt. That is how we learn.

Grief can take care of itself, says Twain. And it should. But, he says, “to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” We can and do – must – grieve over our foolishness alone. We do not rush out and tell everyone, tell anyone, about the fool we have been. But we do not rejoice over our good deeds all alone. We need someone else, many others, to share our joy. When something good has happened to us, we can’t wait to share our good news.

God may have created us on the last day when God was worn out, exhausted, and did not give us his best shot. I can live with that. We all can because we must. What God also did, as the creation parable makes very, very clear is that God created us for one another. It is not good for us to be alone, especially in our joy and even in our grief and sorrow.

Yes, we need to grieve alone in order to personally deal with whatever it is we are grieving about – a foolish action, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a failure of some kind. We need that time alone, but we need others to be close at hand.

We are who we are: each of is wise and foolish, weak and strong, sad and joyful all rolled into one human being. We are God’s creation. That explains everything even if we can’t understand the half of it.