Enough

I am aware that I have wrought my own suffering. But to be merely aware is enough. As if there was anything I could do to prevent the feelings and thoughts from their onset, without continuing to inflict more suffering upon the soul by wrestling with the heart.

The battle is ours

I've had Leeland’s “The War” in my Christian music playlist for quite a few months now. There’s a line in there that I now realize can be incredibly deceiving:

“… for the battle is not yours, but God's.”

—2 Chronicles 20:15

The thing is, to interpret this phrase in the way that most people are likely interpreting it—as if God absolved us of all our troubles, and we need not bear the abject suffering involved in life’s struggles—requires reaching such great metaphorical heights if it is to make any sense within the context of the human condition.

Are we really all that naïve? There are two types of people—one that suffers because they have no other choice but to suffer, and one that suffers but decides to make something of that suffering. For the former, when one is subject to a mental prison of their own oppressive thoughts, when one is victim to cruel and miserable circumstances outside their control, I think we can definitively say that they’ve lost whatever battle there was to be won. And for the latter—are we not the authors of our own stories? Are we not the ones that emerge triumphant from a hard-fought war?

What battle is God fighting for us? If he truly plays a role in our battles here on Earth, it is not a role that we can understand or should even attempt to understand. But in the meanwhile, the injustice and misfortune we must tolerate? Those are for us to tolerate. Those moments of pure misery and suffering we must endure? Those are for us to endure. And those harrowing ventures into the darkness and the unknown we must take? Those are for us to take. Why would God fight those battles for us, when precisely, it is in the fighting, that we derive any sense of purpose in this life? He designed this life for us, after all; we shouldn’t pretend as if he doesn’t understand it.

Continue

To dread suffering is to dread a life worth living.

To be afraid of mistakes is to be afraid of learning and knowledge.

To be a victim of our circumstances is to be a victim of our own ignorance.

Simply rest, move on, and continue to do what you set out to do.

If that’s not enough, then what is?

Have hope

Remember to have hope, but also remember—losing it will do you no harm.

Looking forward

If there comes a day where I no longer have anything to look forward to, why should I worry?

There’s an opportunity for me to finally have the time to look backward—to reflect, to introspect.

Or even better yet—here, in this fleeting and precious moment in time—to merely look.

As if I knew

And why should I pretend that I understand this volatile and capricious heart? Why should I act as if I understand human chemistry, as if I comprehended the intricacies of each interaction? As if I knew precisely the emotional reactions that would ensue? As if I could predict the future—the aggregate outcome of each and every event that would befall us? Why persist in this façade, going against every principle and lesson that I’ve ever internalized in my life? Why make an exception for our natural inclination to believe certain things—our unreliable intuition and our haughty sense of judgment—when time and time again it has proven itself excessively prejudiced and wholly presumptuous?

Imperfection

For a long time, I conformed to the conventional perspective of determining a romantic partner— concocting absurd requirements and exactifying the specific traits that one should possess, drawing countless arbitrary boundaries and assigning red flags to any undesirable action, and obsessing over the circumstances that build up into any form of relationship.

But knowing what I know now about human nature and the human condition, could I be so oblivious to blithely approach any human interaction, romantic or platonic, expecting the other person to be perfect in any conceivable way? To be without flaw nor fault in character? To be without scar nor blemish? To be without trauma nor vice?

In the same way that suffering is an indispensable component of a fulfilling life, imperfection is an indispensable component of a fulfilling relationship. It is what gives it color and shape, a mission and a meaning, and ultimately a story to be told.

The right thing to do

It’s a strange feeling—to realize that the right thing to do, is exactly what feels the most wrong.

Instead of doing what I set out to do, here I am, huddled up in blankets and doubting my own abilities and intuition. The resistance within me balks at the thought of change, at the thought of strenuous labor, at the thought that I might just have to keep my promises.

Our feelings can only serve as weak indicators of right and wrong. Lest we forget that it is of an anachronistic design, part of a biological system that is completely out of place in our complex societal context. It wants security, comfort, and predictability to ensure survival—rather, what it perceives as survival. To trust it to determine our life decisions would be no less foolish than entrusting it a roll of the dice—merely hoping that we have the right emotion at the right moment.

Patience and Desperation

This life demands that we simultaneously understand how to be patient, and how to be desperate. But we cannot claim to understand what to be patient for, and what to be desperate for, simply by analyzing the surface. There are things that seem exigent but can wait, and there are other things that can wait but seem exigent. To discern between the two is a skill invaluable to the human being that heeds their calling.

Making sense

We can only make sense of the present through the past. But that assumes that the present will always resemble the past.

And, more importantly, we assume that we can make sense of it at all.