I got a good lesson yesterday about what is important. For the first time since 1961, Oregon State, my university won an NCAA national championship. I from the same town as the head coach and one of the important players on the team. It was an exciting series. In the end, though, it was pretty anticlimactic. All this took place while I drew with the kids, then read another chapter in How to Win Friends and Influence People, all with the radio off. The war against terrorism went on around the world with people risking their lives for our freedoms, even while The New York Times and the LA Times were doing everything but apologizing for publishing national secrets that will cause people to die. Our missionaries, oft forgotten in far-away places, quietly give their lives in truly heroic fashion so that others can live. I listened to the players and announcers talk after the game, describing how important was this event in their lives. It saddened me that my life gets caught up in such things. It all seems so shallow and unimportant in the whole scheme of things that we have to find significance in such fleeting events.
