Just Say No To Censorship

Yesterday night I rediscovered something: Movies edited for TV just aren't generally worth watching. Billy Madison is one of my favorite movies of all time. Adam Sandler at his ludicrous best. The USA Network bought the rights to the film, then promptly neutered it of any real humor. Very disappointing. Witnessing the devastation of a truly great piece of comedy just confirms my respect for Comedy Central's willingness to show hillarious films, completely uncensored. I just wish that the FCC would let them show them some time other than 1:00 am on Sunday mornings.

On to weightier concerns...

Saturday was a great day. My fantasy football league drafted teams, and even though I think that there is one clear favorite (dude has Peyton Manning, Priest Holmes, Nate Burleson, Jeremy Shockey, and Hines Ward), I'm very pleased that I ended up with Michael Vick, LaDanian Tomlinson, Andre Johnson, Eddie Kennison, Jason Witten, and Jason Elam. I was so filled with football fervor that I purchased a new - personalized! - Tennessee Titans jersey.

I played football in high school - first as a middle linebacker and later as an offensive and defensive tackle. I proudly wore number 65, a lineman's number that well-suited my 280-pound frame. In the years since, I have always chosen number 65 for shirts, jerseys, etc., when I had the option. But now the situation is a little different. Twenty months ago, I weighed 305 pounds. Today I weigh 223. I haven't been this "small" since my freshman year of high school. And with that change in size, I think I need to change my number - now I need a smaller player's digits.

Which brings me to true focus of this post - choosing a number for my new Titans jersey. I was having trouble deciding on a number that would suit me, when one of my friend recommended that I choose based on numerology. Essentially, numerology says that everyone has a personal number based on their date of birth. She said that we should look up my personal number and that I should use it as my jersey number. She had thought that all of these numbers were single-digit, but when we looked up my number, it came up "22" - called a "master number". Further, the description of a 22's personality traits were uncannily similar to, well, me. I won't go into details about what it said - if you really care to know, go to www.123numerology.com and plug in November 5, 1977 - but (as one who is extremely skeptical about stuff like this) it was pretty bizarre to see an "accurate" description of my personality based on nothing more than my birthdate.

This is really confounding to me because it ties into the whole question of Destiny. Now, I don't for an instant give credence to numerology. Neither do I believe in the traditional idea of predestination, as in "God has a single perfect plan and we're all just playing out our predetermined roles in the great cosmic drama." But on the other hand, I have always had a sense (call it either a delusion of grandeur or the product of an overly adoring family) that I am called to do important things in my life. When I was eight my life was saved because a voice inside my head told me to hit my bike's brakes just before a truck I had neither seen nor heard plowed through an alley that I would have been crossing. At a number of significant points in my life, I've distinctly feld God calling me to pursue certain paths - paths that didn't make much sense by any conventional wisdom - and I've felt an inward assurance that there is a purpose that I'm intended to serve, though I don't know precisely what that purpose is.

I can't pretend to reconcile my ideas in this regard, and that frustrates me greatly. What are your thoughts on Destiny? Do you feel a calling for your own life? How did you discover it? Did you ever think you were destined for something only to find out later that you weren't?