by Pastor Ken
The soccer 2022 FIFA World Cup ended successfully in Qatar a few days ago. After much hard work, Argentina finally won the championship again after 36 years, and the entire country was elated by the incredible achievement. However, did the whole world, 7.8 billion people, pay attention to this sports event and care about who won?
In the baseball world series, perhaps only the United States and a few other countries influenced by American culture take part. In the cricket world competition, only countries in the British Commonwealth send teams to participate. Swimming, figure skating, racing, sailing… many Olympic events have their own world competitions. As long as the event has over two national teams, it can be called an international or world competition.
However, World Series occasions are meaningless to those who live in a different world.
To a person living in extreme poverty, perhaps all he can think of is how to survive. I once watched a documentary about a group of people who worked from sunrise to sunset just to find firewood from the nearby hills for their families to use or sell in the marketplace. Their world focuses on survival. Who would have time for sports and entertainment?
Some people are addicted to drugs and only care about two things in life: how to find money to buy drugs, and how to use drugs to satisfy their carvings. That is their world.
Some people are obsessed with making money in the stock market. They trade in their local stock exchange and also in foreign markets through the internet. Apart from sleeping and three meals a day, their world is packed with analyzing numbers, tracking the financial news, and buying and selling stocks.
Still, there are some people who dream of winning the Nobel Prize. They engage in scientific research and spend fourteen hours a day and seven days a week in the laboratory. Their world circles around designing projects, analyzing data, and publishing papers.
What is life for? We tend to spend our time in our own world. If you are born in poverty, live in an undeveloped country, or in a war zone, perhaps your only option is to survive in a miserable, dark world. However, if we have a choice, we must cherish it. We shall become self-reliant, then join forces with others in the community to uphold basic human rights and maintain peace. We must look for opportunities to contribute to society.
Besides surviving in the world, we also need to build our own inner world, which is made up of thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, and values. For example, we adopt religious beliefs to have a relationship with God. Through art, we experience beautiful things or develop a hobby for enjoyment. In our inner world, we don’t need to compete with others or worry about others’ approval.
The size of our world, either outer or inner, depends on what we care about. One thing is for sure, it has to be large enough for us to soar and grow.
