Well everyone, in this blog I have repeated some of my ideas
that I have used before in poems and sayings, but I think it could be good that
I keep coming back to some recurring themes.
That could be how I know that I am onto something important. This
particular thing that I want to mention has to do with some of my thoughts
about staying alive, and what to think when life becomes a lot about endurance
instead of blessings or even service and productivity. I have been truly
miserable sometimes with no end in sight, and it made me wonder what the purpose
of living is. I mean why should people
be able to take away my Christian martyrdom AND get away with torturing
me. It seems like it should be one or
the other. Like you can't make my life
meaningless and purposeless and be allowed to hurt me on purpose. And yet I have found myself in situations
that seem like that. I have tried to
handle those situations by praying more, thinking that maybe my prayers would
count for more since I did not feel good, but it is hard to believe that kind
of thing when you feel like your life is being wasted. However, after years of doing what therapists
call "Opposite action," where you just keep building a life when you
don't feel like it, I have concluded that the very times that most seem like lose-lose
situations are actually part of a life that has a bright side on every
side. I have concluded that if I am
expected to keep living with unbearable suffering, then my existence must be
very important and every second that I spend on earth is crucial. And then the
other bright side is that if people, including me, really are allowed to ruin
my life, then that must mean that the most important stuff is in heaven, and I
can accept extreme losses here with infinite hope. It is kind of a luxury to
write about this stuff now that some of my suffering has eased up and I don't
have to be using all my might to get through each day, but I think there is a
reverse alternative to thinking okay, people are allowed to take away both my
temporal happiness and my eternal reward. It's more like all the swindling and adversity
can both confirm the once-in-eternity nature of this opportunity to live, and still
suggest that there must be some kind of consolation so great that people can
take it all and they have taken nothing.
