David McElroy

For the first time in my life, I’m happy. At least some of the time.

That’s not exactly the right word — when I say “happy” — but it’s the best way I know to describe it. Have I ever experienced happiness before? Yes, of course. But when I’ve been happy in the past, it’s always been that I’ve felt happy about something in particular.

I was happy that a woman loved me. I was happy that I’d solved a major problem. Or gotten something new. Achieved something that made me feel good for a moment.

But there was always an expiration date on those things, even if I often didn’t understand that. If I felt happy that a particular woman loved me — someone who I had wanted, for instance — I typically felt as though this was the one thing that would make me happy for life.

But there was always something missing. Something was wrong.

Once the relationship died — or the shiny new object lost its shine — I always grew restless. Something inside me was always looking for the next big thing that would make me happy.

Slowly — without me consciously noticing it — something changed. A miracle happened.

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I’m still looking for my place in this world.

In reality, though, I’m trapped between two worlds. I was born into a flesh-and-blood world which is ruled by a mindless culture which feels cold and indifferent at best, angry and evil at worst. At times, I glimpse another world — a world in which love and decency and compassion lead us to connection with a creator who is often hidden.

I’m a part of both worlds, but I want to live more and more in the world of the spirit. More in the world of love. More in the world of this creator spirit who I know as God.

There are times when I want to rage against the dysfunction and the evil of what modern popular culture has become. That’s partly because what I see seems so wrong, but it’s partly because being immersed in that culture keeps us from seeing the spirit world.

So there are times when I’m angry about the world in which I’m living, when I’m filled with confusion and hurt and outrage about what we have created.

But this is not one of those times.

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Ray Bradbury wrote a short story in 1951 that has haunted me since I first read it as a teenager. And as I walked the streets of my neighborhood late Thursday night, I saw the perfect illustration of what Bradbury warned us about.

I snapped this photo with my iPhone as I passed a house close to home. These people have a television set that’s almost as big as the massive front window of their house.

As I stood there in the dark street, I watched a house where the television set was larger than life. The people inside were apparently engrossed in a movie. Their cat and I were still in the real world, but their real world seemed to have been consumed by a giant television.

“The Pedestrian” is a simple tale about a man who walks in his own neighborhood every night. It’s about a man who hasn’t changed himself to become what his culture has demanded that “normal” people become.

Tonight, I felt like the man from the story.

But the people inside this house are the normal ones who conform to what our culture offers. I’m the iconoclast who sees hidden danger in what my culture offers me in a shiny package.

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