Making note of Matt’s whimsical attitude about life—but his serious commitment to social issues—a reader asks Matt whether he believes people should take the world’s problems with a grain of salt and a healthy sense of humor, or with an urgent sense of seriousness.
Matt responds:
I think the greatest answer I’ve heard along those lines is when Christ was asked by the leaders of the community whether you should give the tribute to Caesar, and he asked for a coin. Caesar’s head was on the coin, and he said, “Give to Caesar the things that are unto Caesar, and to God the things that are unto God.”
Should we take ourselves seriously? I believe we should take the things that are wrong with the world seriously. I think we can be serious people but not be completely nailed and screwed down in the vice-like grips of our own opinions. It’s great to have your own opinion, but to think the world is going to follow your lead, is in my philosophy ludicrous.
The dog doesn’t even obey us, and when our wife tells us to take out the garbage, and she’s not looking, we can have a little victory by leaving it there for an hour and a half!
Serious things, in many cases, are in the eye of the beholder. What means something to one person doesn’t mean a damn thing to another. I imagine there are some people who argue whether you should stop on red, go on green, and why the hell they put yellow in there to confuse us! Being human, we can come to all sorts of answers to the same question, and they can be very serious to us.
But if we walk around with all that on our shoulders all the time, it’s not a very pleasant thing, carrying this big bag of grunts, pulling them every ten steps to see what they’re doing, and the pronouncement of how they can be fixed or ignored.
On the other hand, if everything is ignored and nothing is fixed, then pretty soon, something else is going to take over. A few months ago I watched a 2-hour dissertation by Alan Weisman, the author of the book, The World Without Us. He started out thinking people were going to destroy the planet, and then after much study, he decided the opposite.
When people become too much of a burden to the planet, the planet eliminates the people. Mr. Weisman had a feeling the planet would go on, but he wasn’t too sure about our species. It was a very thought-provoking and thorough study of man and the way our species treats our surroundings.
It always seems somebody else is bad, but we’re doing good, and vice versa, depending on whose ox is getting gored.
I think living a joyful, loving life, knowing that atrocities are many times taking place, is a valuable but difficult thing to do. Who would have ever thought that on Christmas morning of last year, a man would come to the door dressed as Santa Claus, and when an 8-year-old girl answered the door, he would shoot her in the face, go in, kill 7 more people, and then burn the house down?
But all of these things do happen.
I still think that I always have to sing that “the sun’ll come out tomorrow...” and it will be a better day, and maybe it will be better because I just don’t know any better.
But optimism sure wins out over despair and woe, because if we think we can do better, then in reality we probably can.
So to be serious or to not take yourself and the world too seriously... I don’t know who wins the argument. I don’t think there is an argument; it just depends on which window you’re looking out of, and how you’re seeing the landscape.
Matt