Obsession

You probably don't know this (or care), but one of my favorite books / movies is Moby Dick.  It's almost required annual summertime reading.  There's something about Melville's dark epic that gets to me.  Ahab's obsession with the whale and his willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone simultaneously scares me and, in some way, inspires me.  Plus, hey - Gregory Peck - am I right?

Ahab's pathological idée fixe seals the Pequod's fate; its doom is inevitable.  His colossal hubris leads him to defy rational thought and believe that he can exert his will and remain invulnerable to natural forces. His quest to kill the whale is elevated from mere revenge.  Ahab relentlessly pursues the whale because he believes he is ordained to destroy the evil that his mind has twisted it into representing.  He is a man possessed.

Ok so where am I going with this? 

Well, I guess what it is I admire (for lack of better word) about the inherently unlikeable and frightening sociopath that is Ahab, is his singularity of purpose.  His drive. Insane as it is, this man has a goal in life that he is determined to achieve.  I think I would like to know God's path and purpose for me so that I could set a life goal like that.   Without destroying everything around me, of course.

And unfortunately, I am like him in my tendency to sort of anthropomorphize things/events/life in general as good or evil when, in reality, these things just are what they are.  Like Ahab, I project my reactions and emotions on them and give them power that they obviously can't really have.  I know.  It sounds weird.  The thought that my life is 'bad', like the whale being evil, takes culpability out of the picture.  But I don't obsess about it...well, yes, I sort of do sometimes.

Anyway, as far as stewardship goes, there are two things I learn from this:  1) the whale life is not out to get me, so I should just relax, and 2) find something to be passionate about.