21 dots of pigment

A year goes by, and I wonder about what I did in that year. What did I let my life be for this one year? I decided to go to school, but it seems more like a change from working than adding direction to my life. It's funny how the things I remember the most, or that seem the most important part of last year are the "recreational" events; all in the summer, the prime season of every year.
Vividly I remember games of volleyball, times at the beach, just hanging out with people, and going to california with Juice and Jordan. Everything else, even last semester at school, and all the working days before that, aren't even there. Work especially just seems like nothing; nobody sits in an office for 8 hours a day 5 days a week and remembers anything about it. But that is what millions of people spend their lives doing. But maybe some like it...I saw a guy the other day in front of me while I was driving, and he was working in his car, and at a red light he got out, opened his trunk, pulled some files out of a box, got back in his car and started searching them. I looked at his reflection off of his rear-view mirror, and it was just the "working" face. But not a "i hate this" or "this is so meaningless" face, just a working face, and it reminded me of how I would feel in highschool while doing a project, wanting to do it well and working hard at it and not thinking that it was meaningless, but that working hard and doing what I could had some meaning in itself. And seeing this guy did somethng to me, it made me think about how I usually think about and see other people. I usually look at these guys' lives and say 'how utterly meaningless, business is.'
And maybe that's true, maybe in the back of their minds, they feel that everything in the end is meaningless, and maybe they feel this angst or despair or alienation, those in the "they," but there was something in this one guy that didn't say any of that. When a person works, and works hard and puts his self into his work, work is like an expression of him, its the outpouring of his energy and time, and I don't think this endless hours of work is always a distraction from anxiety and so forth. I think, stemming from how we are to worship God, with our lives, with everything we do, all of our exertions and expressions are legitimate worship to God and that makes life meaningful, and those who may not believe in God, they must still get some similar feeling through their expressions as someone who believes in God.
Why do so many people love playing sports, or playing music, or weight training, or any other sort of recreation? There must be something in doing these things, they're all expressions, the "pressing out" ourselves in these things, and in each different sport or activity there is a different expression, and this is what people need to do. What's happened is that I've begun to think of all of it as distraction for people who are in the "iron grip" of immanence; everything as a distraction, especially work. For most people work is a "must-do" in order to live a good life, living comfortably in a nice house and having the ability to support a family, and it's true, if you want or have a family, you have to work. But work, just like for that guy in his car, can be an expression of self just like a sport, and when a person is working, putting his self into his work, life
just feels real.

And one can look back and say, "What did I do this year?" and look at all these things and think about how meaningless everything seems to be in the end, how all of those days playing a game of soccer or volleyball or riding a roller coaster seem so distant and not even part of one's life, but these are the times remembered, and thinking about them conjures up a good feeling, a smile, a want to do it again some time, a relishing of those experiences, and I think I can say I'm happy about my 20th year.
Life doesn't pass by, time does.