At
a recent family gathering, someone mentioned the old TV show “My Three Sons” (I
have two brothers and no sisters); the unlikely follow-up question was “What
was the name of the dog on the show”? Of
course, no one could remember. Out came
a smart phone and within a matter of seconds we had the information and
everyone nodded and said, “Oh, that’s right!
I remember now!”
TIME magazine recently released an
issue with the headline “The Answers Issue: everything you never knew you
needed to know”. It began with an
article about the information explosion that now influences our lives. The demand for maps or travel agents or
encyclopedias has diminished, replaced by GPSs, the internet, and Wikipedia. The article did point out some dangers of
this new information age, but insisted our quality of life can be enhanced by
what we can now know.
The magazine then asked and answered
multiple questions: What is the most patriotic color? (Red, the most common color in national flags) Where do designer dogs come from? (Deliberate cross-breeding; I now know that
actor Jeremy Irons owns a Labradoodle, a cross between a Labrador Retriever and
a Poodle) Are there any safe places left
to live (regarding the least likelihood of natural disasters)? (Areas of Montana and Idaho are your best
bets) They even offered a quiz: “Are you
smarter than a teen-ager?” (I failed
miserably, although in my defense it’s been nearly 40 years since I bid adieu
to my chronological teen years and more than 25 since I said good-bye to my
psychological teen years.)
The issue even analyzed the U. S.
population according to income level. I
was actually surprised to find that the percentage of “very happy” people was
highest in those with the highest incomes and lowest in those with the lowest
incomes. Maybe money does buy happiness,
although I think not. It makes me wonder
how we define happiness. Is happiness
defined by having what we want?
Personally, I think of that as pleasure, not happiness. Happiness to me is an inner contentment that
reflects our right-relationship with God.
Not surprisingly, the article said nothing about God or faith or
religion or morality, but I suppose those topics are not exactly information
based or fact based and the article wasn’t geared in that direction. Still, the questions it posed have far less
to do with the quality of life than do questions about God and faith and
religion and morality. If we think
sinful lives are happy lives we are only deluding ourselves.
This weekend the Church celebrates
“The Exaltation of the Holy Cross” (replacing the 24th Sunday in
Ordinary Time). The cross, of course,
represents the suffering of Jesus. We
talk about “carrying our crosses” and by that we refer to burdens that are
difficult. Logically, the cross doesn’t
suggest happiness, and yet our faith reminds us that without the cross there is
no resurrection. When Jesus willingly
accepted the cross (and the suffering and death to which it led), He became a
model for us: we, too, must accept the crosses that come our way by living our
faith in a secular world. The world
consistently tells us to reject the cross in favor of easier paths, but our
faith teaches us that’s not the way to happiness.
It’s nice to be able to know things in
a matter of seconds, but that won’t fulfill our destiny as children of
God. Making the choice to live our faith
each day will.
By the way, the dog’s name on “My
Three Sons” was Tramp.
Have a blessed week . . .
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