On Tangentialism

A number of weeks ago, i walked into latin class.
I forget what i did, but it was something in accordance with my usual style of going about things, which is "out of the ordinary" for most people.
My latin teacher looked at me and said, "Peter, your life really is just a tangent."
I laughed, looked around, and heartily agreed.
Then i sat down and thought about what that meant.

From geometry and trigonometry, we say that a line is Tangent to a curve if it is perpendicular to that curve and sharing a single point with it.
The classic example being: you have a circle, and you draw a line next to and touching the edge of the circle.
That line shares a single point with the circle.
If you were to follow that line, you would realize that it quickly goes away from the shape. The only time the line is actually near the circle is where it's right next to it.
Everywhere else, it's just another line.

I'd like to think that the world would be a much more interesting place if everyone lived their lives like "tangents" to the world around them.
If we could all learn not to take ourselves seriously.
If we could all understand that the world is impermanent.
If we could all realize that what we do here doesn't mean hardly anything in the long scheme of 'history'.

I think that's how Christ would have us think of our lives.
You have the world, caught up in all of itself.
And then you have Eternity.
Eternity has almost nothing to do with the world.
It's this line that briefly, for a single point, is connected with it.
And that single point is all the time we have to do everything we're here to do.
As soon as the line moves on, we're gone from here, on to bigger and better things.

Jesus said, "my kingdom is not of this world."
And so, i believe, neither should our lives.
But we're here now, and we have work to do.