Reference Point

At first your par­ents are ref­er­ence points. You imi­tate them. Then your class­mates become ref­er­ence points. At that point you start get­ting into trou­ble. We humans are great imi­ta­tors. By high school we admire rock stars, celebri­ties, and maybe even an inspir­ing teacher or com­mu­nity fig­ure. We com­pare our­selves to them and envy some of their gifts or char­ac­ter­is­tics. It never quite works. We end up being our­selves. No mat­ter how you slice it, you are still you.
The trou­ble with being who we are is that there is some­thing tug­ging at us inside call­ing for more. It is inher­ently attracted to the “greats” of his­tory — espe­cially reli­gious his­tory. In the West, and at what­ever level, Jesus is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar ref­er­ence point. Chalk much of it up to cul­tural habit. We like Christ­mas and Easter. Even sec­u­lar­ists like hav­ing an extra day off. We also love the art of those old medieval church build­ings. Though many mod­ern and post­mod­ern peo­ple have rel­e­gated reli­gios­ity to the past, there is still the uni­ver­sal hunger for an inspir­ing ref­er­ence point.
Gangs are hor­i­zon­tal. Their ref­er­ence points are their group equals. Che Gue­vara shirts are back in style. For lack of a bet­ter choice (and a really bad grasp of his­tory) some have cho­sen an exe­cu­tioner as their ideal. Flags and faces abound. The iden­tity hunt con­tin­ues. Stat­ues of the Bud­dha, courses on Gandhi, prayers fac­ing Mecca, imi­tat­ing the peo­ple next door — the ten­dency is per­sis­tent. For a grow­ing group, pol­i­tics has become their reli­gion (lots of mis­ery in that one).
So far, I have not found a bet­ter per­sonal ref­er­ence point than the his­toric Jesus. As a mat­ter of intel­lec­tual hon­esty, one must keep look­ing I sup­pose. How­ever, at my age I am com­ing to doubt that any­one will ever out­shine him. I have my heroes in physics, art, phi­los­o­phy, and lit­er­a­ture. I give credit where credit is due. I con­sider them the stan­dards in their respec­tive fields. How­ever, of all my life’s ref­er­ence points, there is only one them I would truly like to meet.