Here's the first post. Yippee!
This has been something I've been thinking about over the past semester. I hope the thinking has been fruitful. :)
"I was swimming through the waves
For what must have been days, but could find no relief.
And when I started sinking down,
I thought for certain I would drown until I saw you in the ocean underneath.
All the the bright colored fish tell of a treasure in a dull shell:
'Such subtlety, so easily missed!'
You, my hidden pearl of pure and perfect love,
And I'm a living example of 100% the opposite of this!"
Excerpt from "Tie Me Up! Untie Me!"
- mewithoutYou
I find the human condition very ironic at times. WE STRIVE SO HARD; we work and we toil, all for things that we think will make us happy. This is obviously the case in our secular, uber-post-modern, materialistic society, where our chief export isn't cars or food or oil or electronics or even a service of some kind, but our culture and our lifestyle. People all across the world hate us for flaunting our money around and using it mostly on pleasurable things, and at the same time want so badly to be able to take part in our post-modern Vanity Fair. After all, isn't this desire to be "happy" the major motivation behind our entire capitalist system, for which we are so prosperous, and for which most of the world hates our guts? The thought, "I work hard so I can get a good job and make lots of money so I can buy things to make me happy," and other thoughts like it are pretty dang commonplace in America, after all.
I think Sigmund Freud nailed how Americans so often think nicely when he said, "They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavour has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. In its narrower sense the word 'happiness' only relates to the last." While Freud is incredibly depressing for me to read, and while he completely discounts religious activities with faulty reasoning, he is also a brilliant observer of human nature. As he smartly points out, we want so badly to have these good feelings for ourselves, and so we strive--and strive hard--to keep our "good" feelings.
It even happens to Christians too, doesn't it? We want so badly to DO THE RIGHT THINGS, to read our Bibles and pray a lot, and go to church and serve people, and not sin and to be the "best" Christians we can and strive as to win the prize, because that's supposed to make us happy, right?
We swim so hard, don't we?
But what happens when we get tired? What happens when we can barely tread water? What happens when we stop swimming and start sinking?
We drown.
But it's a funny thing, really, that when we start sinking and start submitting to the ocean, when we feel like we're losing control, when we feel like WE'RE DROWNING, we also figure out that it's OKAY to drown in the Ocean of Grace, and when we do, we find the treasure we had been swimming after all that time.
Ironic, isn't it?
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4 comments:
Wow, Garrett, this is amazing. A further irony is this: that pearl that we find once we submit ourselves to drown in the oceans of grace (a beautiful picture, by the way) turns out to be just that-- a pearl, which, by the way, cannot occur without sand. A grain of sand, a stupid un-original one-just-like-all-the-other millions of grains of sand. A grain of sand that rubs and chafes at the inside of an (oyster?) until that pearl is created out of sand.
Freud's absence-of-pain categorization of happiness? Hmm... well the way I see it, that pearl of happiness doesn't happen without that sand of despair...
What do you think?
~Jen Hardy
Thanks for the comment, Jen! :)
As far as Freud's definition, I was merely using the "absence-of-pain" model as a model for the way we, as humans, sometimes THINK happiness is achieved, when in fact, I also believe that the "sand of despair" is most definitely needed before any pearls can be found. :)
So, in short, I'm in total agreement with you. In fact, I actually did my Rags topic on why suffering (and the correct reponse to it) is necessary for human happiness. :)
Oh, also, I don't think that we shouldn't work for what we need or even what we desire (like money, food, etc...), what I was addressing in this post was when we desire to take control of things and make the work a means to depend on ourselves, instead of relying on God to take care of us. Just thought I'd add that, just in case anyone was thinking I'm a freeloading hippie, haha. :)
I demand another post.
Working on it. ;)
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