velocity

Yesterday I felt like crapola, so this morning I was very pleased to find myself ravenously hungry after a good night's sleep. I went to my favorite local coffee shop, had some scrambled eggs and toast, and listened to a table of old men vigorously discuss their personal faith.

It always strikes me as odd, and a little bit sad, that the people who speak the most openly and often about religion generally have the most generic ideas. It leads me to believe that they really aren't very interested in asking themselves the important (and infinitely more interesting) questions like "What do I really think about the way the world works?" and are content to simply feel like they belong to something. Discussions of personal faith often strike me as thinly veiled competitons about who belongs more, or who is the best at belonging. It's sad that people don't want to challenge themselves, and really explore the bigger question.

But the flip-side of the coin is this: my little ghetto hoodrats are never afraid to ask. They want to know what I think about the world, they want to learn how to ask themselves those difficult questions, and they want to come up with answers. They don't care if it pulls them away from belonging to something, they want to know. They want to know why they're here, they want to know what life wants out of them, they want to know what's behind it all.

And these are the two sides of my life. I live in a quiet, upper class neighborhood. I drive a sensible car. I have good table manners. I know how to fit in to polite society. But more and more, it seems like when I cross the proverbial tracks and spend my days with former hoodlems, drug addicts and gang members, these are the people I'd rather have inherit the Earth. If they can grow up without losing the desire to ask these questions, the world will be better for it.