Aren't we in Need of a Wow

I swang by the protest on the National Mall yesterday not to lend my voice to a cause but to experience it. It was a hodge podge of causes and events. People milling about protesting whatever cause they felt like protesting with only the consensus that they weren't happy with what was going on in the world and felt like raising their voices.

I'm not sure how many folks were down there. The official count was 50,000 but all of them weren't there when I was there. I rode around trying to find the focus, the center of this mini-universe, but could only find the masses. I guess in the end I was slightly unimpressed.

This leads me to the title line, aren't we in need of a wow? By that I mean aren't we supposed to be impressed with something? Impressed by our leaders, the events in our lives and the people we put faith in. Too often being ok is confused for mediocrity and that is genuinely dangerous. Mediocrity is a term that means nothing to me. It is the absence of feeling, a total sense of numbness.

Numbness is only ok if you intend on avoiding pleasure and pain-- if you intend on doing nothing except living and dying. I cannot tolerate a lack of motion, a lack of passion or a lack of feeling. I am as guilty as the rest in that sometimes I make my decisions based on avoiding pain or discomfort. However, in the moment, making a decision based on what will be the least painful is making a decision to do nothing. Risk something and you might be rewarded, risk nothing and you'll never be disapointed because you'll have nothing. For me, I'll take the former.