Relevance

I recently watched  the movie "The Little Prince" (shout out to Cody for making me sit down and watch it while he studied) and the idea of being "essential" has not left my mind since. The movie basically is about what is wrong with society and grown ups and has heavy emphasis on the idea that adults think that all things need to be "essential"; if it isn't obviously helpful or needed then it is useless. I think this ideology plagues the world today. Why do we feel the need to be essential? And to push the idea of being essential even further, we feel the need to be relevant. Why? Being relevant is over rated. I easily find myself wanting to post certain things on Instagram or give off certain vibes or eat certain things to make myself feel revenant, to make myself feel like I belong to something or in something. I cannot even put it into words.. I just feel this pressure to make myself relevant and if I can't be relevant then what even am I? Of course I can't escape my culture entirely, but where does the pressure to make myself an important part in this particular day and age come from? I suppose its natural.. We, I, want to feel needed or like I belong but is being essential or relevant the way to go? 

I find myself thinking of monks often. Yes, they write and sometimes do community work and all that, but I would say that they aren't essential or relevant in society and yet they seem so peaceful and content. I want that. I want to be content with not being relevant. Of course I want to be relevant in terms of my faith and my belonging to the church of christ, but I don't want to feel the need to be relevant to society. I don't know if there is a way to escape it. I will just have to constantly remind myself that earthly relevance is not a pressing issue to me. As long as I remain relevant to the people that I love and essential to the body of Christ then I will be okay. 

In the movie I mentioned earlier, the adults are all terrible and strict and boring people that are so consumed with being essential that they lose sight of what it means to be alive. I don't want to lose that, I don't want to lose what it means to be me. I cannot let myself get caught in the mix of making myself relevant to society. Jesus was anti-relevant and anti-culture. He was not "contemporary with the times" (thanks dictionary.com), He was love and sacrifice and life. And non of those things involve becoming essential. I believe that there is beauty in this world and beauty does not always have a purpose; it isn't "essential" for something to be beautiful, but I am still drawn towards that. I hope I never lose sight of that, I hope I never stop looking at the world in awe and being amazed at the beauty and wonder of it all. I hope I never start filtering everything through the "essential" lens. I hope I make a good grown up.