7 - 31 - 17 What's Important? (3 minutes)

A while ago, while hanging out with some friends from high school I suddenly thought of how easily I could have not been friends with any of them anymore. It was entirely within my power to, after I graduated, no longer talk to or hang out with them. Here’s an interesting question though, in doing that, was I making them not matter to me (as our relationship ceased) or was it a sign that they never mattered to me?

I suppose it could be the latter, and I think it has been in other cases in my life. In those circumstances I think we should examine our motives for being dishonest in our friendships. There is a distinction there though, there are some people we are simply kind to who mistake us as their friends, when we really don’t have much desire to associate with them. Did we intentionally deceive someone, or did they mistake our kindness to them for an affection for them? Here I mean not affection as in the general love for others that makes being kind to strangers easier, I mean affection as a weakness or preference for.

There’s not many more awkward circumstances than this. But it’s nothing some charity can’t navigate. Though I’ve only lived in one era I’d have to imagine it’s much more difficult to be courteous and clear when communication takes only a second with anyone, anywhere. We don’t desire to insult people, but if we don’t wish to talk to them the ease of communication makes it far more likely they will take it as such.

I like the idea of the former (we’re making them not matter) however. It reminds me of a Lincoln quote, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” It carries with it this conception of our own ability to change our lives for the better. I think many things in our lives are about as important as we decide they are.

Some things are important no matter what we think, our health, our faith, the nature of our relationships (in general, not the specific people). But even those things we consider vital, aren’t necessarily. If someone runs away from home at fifteen and never contacts their family again, their family’s importance in their life has surely diminished. Or, if in looking at your spouse among the pool of all the people you’ve dated is there some factor that makes them uniquely marriageable? Now I don’t believe in predestination so I’d have to say no. That you made the choice implies you could have chosen differently, perhaps married someone you, in the real past, never even dated. How much do you think about your ex from high school? So you’ve elevated someone’s importance from “see them every five years at the reunion” to “see you nearly every morning for the rest of my life.” And that was on you, pretty drastic.

Consider even people who get divorced for a more temporal, less probabilistic argument. If they’ve got no children together they could never speak again, going from spouse to stranger.

And I think this is one of the lessons we can draw from the Gospel reading today, Matthew 13:31-35. It’s the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast. I think this smallness to bigness can be interpreted many ways as size is indicative of many things. Not only is a mustard seed not “mighty”, it is also hard to see. It is not highly evident why it matters initially, and it won’t matter unless we plant it. If we cast the mustard seed on the road it will continue to matter almost nothing for a while, and then matter exactly nothing to us when a bird eats it or it is crushed underfoot. But if it matters to us, and we plant and tend it, it will produce a large bush such that birds come and nest in its branches.

The little yeast bacteria, living any given place, is invisible and inconsequential. We cannot say where there is or is not yeast, and we don’t have any indication of what it’s doing at any given time. Until we put it in bread, then we have put this strange bug into our food. But in doing this it becomes vitally important, it leavens the bread. Hence, by a decision we have made we have turned something worthless and unimportant into something useful and valuable.

I think I may have already written about this idea before, but I couldn’t remember if I’d written it, said it, or just dreamt I’d done either. Even if I’ve already written it I’m sure the intersection of this and the earlier will be fruitful.