New

Sitting on the plane in Columbus, OH, I became giddy with excitement for my new adventure. There is something so fresh about new things, so pure and fleeting that makes them so desirable. After some thought on the flight to Atlanta I think I figured out the two reasons new things drive us crazy.

1) They are the only way we can experience some hint of perfection here on earth. As humans we jack everything up. Name one thing we have touched that we haven’t made worse, if not ruined altogether- Seriously, if you can think of one, let me know. My amazing new adventure right now is perfect and exists in a glamorous hypothetical in my head. “Well, what about God?” you might ask. The thing with God is that, yes, he is perfect and we can experience him, but the problem with that is that, again, we are humans so we can not fully take in the perfection of God. We can know more and more of Him and we should pursue it, but we see him through the jacked up lens of sinful, finite humanity. We will not completely or perfectly understand God’s infinite perfection until we meet him in Heaven. So getting new things or starting on new adventures is a much smaller, finite, understandable way to experience fleeting perfection.

2) Second Law of thermodynamics: Things go from a state of order to disorder. Entropy always increases. I love the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is so true, scientifically agreed upon, and really only fits with a Christian world view. The world is going down the crapper, few people will argue with that. I have found that few worldviews account for this. I am not going to go through each worldview but the most obvious belief that this blatantly refutes is pure evolution since evolution, at its core, is merely the opposite of this law.

But I digress. Allow me to put on my cynical bastard hat. My point is that time ruins everything. I realize that this is not a novel idea and youth is the white rabbit that a lot of aging women chase into monster-dom. But the perfection of a black Mac Book, still smelling of the delicious new mac smell that oozes from all of it’s stylish products will fade. I am not making an argument per se, but the evidence of this is especially obvious in movies and relationships [or just these are the areas that came to my mind]. The next time you can’t sleep and are watching a crappy movie on cable that is completely void of it’s glamor or even it’s draw to be watch other than the fact it is 3:42am you are tired of the oxy clean guy, remember people shelled out 6-9 dollars to see it on opening night. Odds are, people sat in theaters before it came out, saw the preview and whispered to their friend next to them, “oo that looks like it will be good.”

With relationships, the sheer newness and purity of a budding romance covers thousands of problems. It is like the smooth shellac over the rough wood of our imperfections that time will inevitably wear off. There is only time between being the man of her dreams and being the ex-boyfriend the new man of her dreams is trying not to be.

Generally after some depressing thoughts I try to redeem it with hope but I don’t really feel like there is some real hope when it comes to newness. It is fleeting and must be to be so good and enjoyable. Things are new and they age and this is not bad. Life has season, love has seasons, computers and movies have seasons. Don’t fight the seasons, have the maturity and awareness to embrace and enjoy each one to the fullest.