How is it that we spend so much lifetime in confusion and yet we get some things so absolutely right on?
Though much in life eludes me, I know somethings deep within my core.
For example: I know that my energies are best spent investing in the care of my kids, as opposed to working a fulltime job. I do NOT udge moms who are able to work, I merely say that I do not have the emotional energies to be so divided for any length of time.
Though my kids be teens, they still have emotional needs, often unspoken ones, and my energies are best spent trying to anticipate them and either be there, standing in the gap for them and with them, or withholding judgements or advice knowing that some lessons they need to learn on their own, and I need to remain available to help them pick up the pieces.
The pursuit of happiness is futile.
Happiness depends solely on the "happenings" in your life.
Pursuing happiness is a waste of good energy, for the rich and the poor suffer alike.
The wise and the fool equally have strife and trials.
There is nothing new under the sun.
What then, can we look to?
What then, can we strive for?
A life well lived.
(In my own experience this is not something that I can do apart from the strength gained by
daily conversations with God Almighty Himself.)
A life lived in seeking to do good, even when it does not benefit ones self, actually ends up benefitting ones self in the long run.
A life lived by putting one's own needs last - this is not to ignore ones needs, but to count them as secondary or less than those of another's - leaves one being challenged to achieve greatness, and fosters humility in ones self.
We all need to choose to eat our own "Humble Pie."
The alternative - if we are lucky or God favours us - is that we will be humilated in order to bring about the blessed state of humility.
Frankly, I would think that choosing to humble ones self would be vastly preferable to being humiliated by God, via circumstances or repercussiosn from poor choices.
Do we cry "Justice! Let there be justice in the world!?"
Or do we cry "Mercy! Grant unto us mercy for we are an imperfect species, destined to ever fall short while we exist within our fleshly tent?"
Frankly when I am tempted to say, "I deserve better!," I think what I should really be saying is,
"What do I deserve?
Do I deserve Hell and Death?"
Yes.
"Do I have better?"
Yes."
Then I should shut up, get over myself, and seek to do good to others before seeking my own good."
Though I own this personally for my self, I fall short in carrying it out with any regularity, even so, I believe that it is a universality that could be owned by most Americans - and even by most westernized cultures.
"What do I deserve?
ReplyDeleteDo I deserve Hell and Death?"
Well you're bound to eperience one of those, i hope not the other.
I think pursuing happiness is important. It's sort of like in calculus as the limit of something approaches zero, it may never reach zero as it heads out into infinity, but it gets closer and closer, and perhaps at some point we don't even notice the difference between 0.000000000000000000000000000009 and zero. In the same way, while pursuing happiness, we may never reach or achieve happiness, but we are perhaps able to draw closer and closer to it. Otherwise all of our choices really would be meaningless and we might as well be a homeless bum or a crazy serial killer, because if we can't have happiness, then why not saddness? Why not make ourselves suffer or why not force our suffering on others? Why not make everyone feel as horrible as we do, why not fall into despair and rage? It's hopeless anyway.
But that isn't true. There is hope--and some happiness can be attained through effort. And we are able to make choices that better bring us closer to happiness than choices that will (perhaps obviously) take us further from it.
But though it may be true, that even though we have a pact with God, that as long as we do right, he keep us safe, God isn't required to honnor that pact, and we have no say in what choices he makes, what ripples he causes. Events happen daily beyond our control, it's not our fault that someone drove home drunk and ran a stop sign plowing into somebody else, but we are forced to pay for it. painfully as it may be. *shrug* and that's life and there are no guarantees that we ever approach zero. but still we try, because the converse is a place too terrible to behold. and too painful to withstand. we keep going forward, because we know we can't go back.
and that's all we can do.
is it worth it? (we hope so) but it might not be worth it at all. we may never make a difference, we may all succumb to murder and brutality and then we die and it's over. and that's the cards we're dealt. *cringe* *ouch* I sure hope that all things happen for the glory of god and his good purposes, but man if sometimes it's too hard to see it.