Numb3rs February 23, 2007
Posted by Aaron in : Life , trackbackJust finished watching this weeks episode of Numb3rs, man I love that show. Nerd(s) coming together with non-nerds and making the world a better place, each applying their skills to Make Things Better. There’s just one part I don’t like, when it ends. I know what your thinking, of course an episode can’t go on forever, but my meaning isn’t really what that statement implies. After the episode is done I walk to my computer wishing that I was more of an idea person, because in those moments (and its not just limited to after watching Numb3rs, for most of the afternoon the urge was there as well) I want nothing more than to create something Useful. Not just another RSS reader, not another solution (however clever) to make people’s todo list or schedule show up on their desktop or their website. It doesn’t have to be a program to help solve the problems associated with curing cancer. All it has to do is Make Things Better. So I sit at my keyboard, hands resting on the keys, willing the direction to come. But it never does. And so I sit, despairing of my inability to wield my skills to the genuine good of a hurting world. Though I know without a doubt that God gave me these skills for a reason, I envy those who go to work in the morning knowing that by the end of the day if they haven’t helped someone directly, then it will not be because they didn’t have the opportunity. The pastors, the physicians, the nurses, the therapists, the social workers.
Eventually just like this time, the despair yields to the knowledge that what I do can help people. No amount of code has the capacity to bandage a wound, but maybe, just maybe, if I do my job well, it can give a nurse a chance to spend a little less time worrying about paperwork or their schedule and a little more about making sure that bandage is on just right. Or maybe it’ll help that grandmother or child send or receive pictures of grandchildren or children without their computer doing things behind their back. Its not the Great Victory I’d like, but it is the daily victory that is within the reach of my skills.
I should probably save a bookmark to this post on every computer I use regularly. Through writing it I was able to remind myself once again of the things I can do, but thats not to say the despair won’t return again another day. For this one moment in time though, it is well, it is well, with my soul.
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Loved what you had to say about numb3rs and more importantly about life and gifts. Remember it was computer nerds who made it possible for us to have blogs so we could share our meditations with the rest of the world.
So be the best toe you can be!
Your father,
the left ulna of the Body