A Normal Person

In one of their journeys, in Lystra, Paul and Barnabas encountered a man who had never (believe it or not) walked before, for he was unfortunately crippled from birth. Seeing the (young?) man with the disability sitting quietly (perhaps on the ground) listening attentively to his preaching, Paul commanded him,

— Stand up on your feet (Acts 14:10).

The cripple man stood up and took the very first steps in his life.

Seeing the miracle (let me call this phenomenon a miracle), the people of the city were amazed (Of course! Who wouldn’t be). And they declared Paul to be Hermes and Barnabas to be Zeus, the two Greek gods. They exclaimed,

— The gods have come to us in human form (v.12).

The priest of the Zeus temple even brought oxen as a sacrifice to offer to the two Gods who had been spotted on the road of their village.

But (Oh! How I love this “but”) Paul sternly upbraided them and said,

— No! I am not… (v.15)



Dear friend,

How many times have human beings thought we were gods?

That ridiculous misconception has caused many wars!

How often have the dominant spices on earth believed that we are Hermes and Zeus,

for we can fly up into the space,

to the Moon, and recently

we successfully launched the human device MIE (Made in Earth) to Mars to roll slowly over the surface of the red planet?

How long has the human race been thinking it was better off,

for we have invented internet, computers, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and 8, Iphone! Ipad! Smartphone! Tablets! You name them…

So many that humanity seems to have no more interest in human beings.

In public, it has now become a social norm, we (the early and the late teens, the young and the old, the poor and the rich alike) don’t talk to one another anymore, but to the Iphones and Ipads; we all use our fingers for touch, touch, touch, touching the Iphone! Touching the Iphone in public has been considered, viewed, seen, and accepted as a new way of life…

At home, individuals shut the doors (of their own rooms or their hearts or their ears, the recent one by the earplugs) to their loved ones and neighbors, for their own cyperspace chats, chats to the people (strangers!) who are in far distant places.

Welcome to cyperspace world!

Welcome to the new way of the new age!

Congratulations! We have successful invented a new social norm.

Silicon Valley, where I worked for a few years, has a famous saying, “The moment I open my brand-new computer box, that moment it becomes obsolete.”

Really?

Back then (2008?), I had not yet learned all the functions that Windows Vista had to offer to its buyer (one might say, “Windows Vista! Yuck!”),

then Windows 7 showed its face in the store…

I installed Windows 7 into my laptop... successfully!

Guess! My laptop could not breathe anymore (because its CPU, memory, and hard disk were originally built for Windows Vista!).

Just like a cancer patient who has undergone chemotherapy, my laptop gasped, it breathed stertorously…

It seemed to take a century for my suffocated laptop to eventually finish launching the new Windows 7 after I turned on the power.

Hakuna Matata! No worries! L.G.! (Life is Good!).

And now it is Windows 8.

I didn’t know that Windows was Windows 8 until someone ridiculed me,

— Dude, it is Windows 8… How old are you? Be honest!

More! More! More! Give me more!

More Iphones! More Ipads! More Laptops! More Windows!

Oh, no! Please! I beg you, all of you! Let me enjoy what I am currently served at the table.

I have not finished my meal yet!

Please, don’t take away my dish!

Let me digest Windows 7 thoroughly.

I will certainly order Windows 8 later at a convenient time.

Don’t rush me. Let me breathe the air to my full capacity, the capacity that my lungs can receive and store.

Let me enjoy the gift that God (whoever this being might be called according to one’s own views or faith) has given me.

Yes, I am a receiver. I was born to be a human being.

No, I am not a giver! I was not born to be a god, Hermes or Zeus.

Surely I know I am not god.

Hence, I turn two empty hands towards heaven every morning, asking for grace, for simple happiness, and for a deep appreciation that I was born

(I guess I would be equally happy if I was born as a rice plant or a sparrow or an ant, or whatever form I might have been given, as long as that form had life).

I give thanks to God for I was born as a normal person.

I am happy if I can walk steadily with my feet on the ground.

Yes, I am content to be a normal person who has Windows 7!!!

MN - NTT