1 : 6,716,117,644

Well the Olympics have gotten underway and maybe it's just the cynic in me or the old age but they don't hold the same allure that they once did for me. I still pop in and out as I'm having my dinner or whatever but I can take them or leave them. It's interesting though to think about how the Olympics and other such pursuits affect us psychologically and as the population increases, are more and more of us giving ourselves over to mediocrity? Now I'm no expert in the study of population but as far as I can gather, the number of humans on the planet is increasing and has been doing so since the time when there were no humans. I've no idea whether it's going to plateau anytime soon but one thing is clear, as individuals, we are becoming less and less of a novelty in our world...less and less unique if you will.

I wonder how that affects us psychologically...Surely when Adam and Eve were wandering around the planet, after the fall, one of the things that must have popped into their heads was how special they were, how they were the only ones of their kind on the planet, how everything revolved around them (figuratively speaking of course!)...how proud they must have felt. And now the best we can do, because there are 6,716,117,644 people on the planet and counting, to feel unique and special is to excel, to rise above the masses and be noticed. The problem is that, mathematically speaking, the more people there are, the more difficult it is to rise. Of course, it's easy to rise to the same height or level of achievement (this can be clearly seen as world records are broken) but relatively speaking, this is much lower as more and more people 'excel' and also, and this is my point, as more and more people exist.

One may look at it like this: Just say for example we put twenty people in a straight line along an over-sized, novelty x-axis and each person stands an arbitrary unit apart. Now if we label the y-axis as being 'achievement' or 'level of excellence' and one of those people rises five units along the y-axis, it is quite an obvious peak and if it were drawn, it would be clear for all to see and admire, thus affording the person fame, fortune and all the other 'f' words they care for.

However, if we put 6 billion people along the x-axis and one of those rises 20 units along the y-axis of excellence, it is theoretically and virtually negligible as any mathematician worth their salt (and most who aren't worth any salt) will tell you. So what does that feel like oh excellent one? To have done all you can to achieve excellence and still not be able to able to break through the meniscus of mediocrity?
I'm sure it can't be pleasant. Whether or not you put it down to our innate pride or our desire to excel, both of these take a hit as we become more and more anonymous...as we become more and more uniform...as we become more and more homogeneous...as more and more procreation means we become more and more linear.

It was only this Saturday in one of the weekend sections of a paper that a columnist was bemoaning the fact that he was getting bored with music...that as he approached music as an à la carte consumer, picking and choosing which tracks he wanted, he realised that it was becoming dull to him and so on. Again, I'm no music historian but we are surely reaching a (if not the) saturation point when it comes to music, not to mention film and, though I admit to irresponsible extrapolation, every other major artistic discipline. To take the music business as an example, long before apple started bobbing for customers, generally speaking, mainstream music was becoming more and more well...mainstream. And as more and more of the supplementary streams were engulfed, torn to bits and left high and dry by the mainstream, excellence and individuals' uniqueness were out the proverbial window.

So what is one to do, musician or otherwise? If we are hardwired to be unique and to be 'excellers' and to do great things with the world around us, how can we possibly function when we are (as I'm guessing anybody who's reading this is) average Joe or Mary Soaps? Well I think the answer lies in God... We are not necessarily going to be the most excellent person in the world at what we do if we focus on God. However, we will become closer and closer to what he made us to be and so, though through the eyes of the world we are possibly even further away from breaking through the average, in God's eyes, we are excelling. We are becoming all that He created us to be. Though this may sound airy fairy to some or it may sound strange to others, I wonder isn't that precisely what Jesus meant when He said "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses His life for my sake will find it." It is when our focus is so much on the Lord Jesus Christ, on God, that we truly lose our lives, we forget ourselves, we forget our pride and our selfish ambitions. And yet the funny thing is, it's when we focus on God (and it is true that that which you focus on, you become like) that we truly find our life because we become more godly, more resembling His image and likeness. It is a beautiful thing when something that was created fulfills its purpose. I think often we only realise how beautiful it is when it stops working (as anyone who has encountered the blue-screen of death or has had a puncture will tell you). Let us all wake up and realise that God created us with a purpose and that purpose is to bring glory to Him. He created us to find our whole purpose for existence in Him. Let us seek to be as observant with the spiritual aspect of our lives as we are with the puncture. Let us look at it and realise that it is in need of repair. Let us stop denying that which is staring us blankly in the face. We were made for God...We find our meaning and our purpose in God...It is only by centering our lives on God that we will start to live...It is when we do this and we accept that we need to be reconciled to God; that we need to repent of all the wrong that we have done in our lives, not so as to earn our way into His good books but out of thankfulness and admittance that the Lord Jesus Christ has done it all on our behalf and all we need to do is accept that by faith.

Let me draw this to some kind of (hopefully) concise closure. Nowadays, if we are to rise above mundane mediocrity, we have to climb so high up the y-axis of excellent that it's either humanly impossible to get there or humanly impossible to stay there. When we look to the living God, we see the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son who enables us to rise. The mind-boggling thing is though that instead of expecting us to climb up to Him, He comes down to us. God becomes man...He humbles Himself to that extent. And it is when we look to this God-man, who humbled Himself that we become more like Him...we humble ourselves (for what other response could we have)...we accept that He has done it all...and it is then, that we find life...it is then that we realise it isn't the bland linear x-axis that is the problem, it's that all the while, we have been looking side-on at a great masterpiece...and as it is slowly turned upright, the colours, the faces, the landscapes, the past, present and future of this Masterwork begin to become clear and we sing "Hallelujah, Praise the Lord for He is great, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."



And slowly the '1' in the title of this post becomes less and less 'me' and more and more 'God'...