Pursuit of Life, Rejuvenation and Eventual Contentment

A thought became apparent to me the past few months it was that: "the sense of a man's curiosity is the beginning of inquisitive inquiries (redundancy with emphasis on man's curious nature). Then man begins to wonder if he's larger than the world he's known." We tend to wonder about the vastness of life beyond our own borders, or wonder what it would be like to live a different life, or to be placed out of our element: what we had become accustomed to. We adventure in these ideals and maybe even dream about the pleasantries of a much more simpler life and maybe how that life would move us to where we want to be in it.

We are curious about the many things that would delight us, the many things that would bring some form of joy or contentment. I realize that the threshold for understanding some form of personal truth in principle and action is to somehow fulfill this longing to be, "happy." In the woes of this desire, our dreams somehow fall either too short to fulfill or too far to even continue to fathom. I notice a sense in me that admires those who dare to do what they've dreamed, and how they came to chase that dream. I think about who I am right now in my life and what has been the driving force in my life to attain certain short term "goals," and how the somewhat discontentment with the normalcy life seems to eventually have becomes more and more mundane as time passes through my comprehension of it. I am left with a tired notion of wanting more; or wanting some form of freedom from the things that hold me; or to be rejuvenated to continue on with living this life.

I think our life is more than the past and present, I believe life is more that the finite future our physical bodies uphold and the eventual decomposition of it. I do not associate my body with these longings to do, or to succeed in "life." The body, the brain moreover, seem to just be vessels of the mind and heart; essentially the soul of a person. I find myself again and again becoming tired both physically and emotionally about living and the strife it takes to just exist. Rest is something we do to restore our bodies; then again, our metaphysical souls need some sort of rest, some form of rejuvenation. The temporal satisfaction of the body isn't sufficient for the longings of the soul. As we choose to grasp tangible physical pleasures out of these things or people, there will always be this void that the soul cannot seem to appease.

It's a curiosity to me of how a person can say that they are truly at peace with their life. It begs the question on how is life worth living, and what is the purpose of life? There's a paradox that I've encountered in the phrase, "live life to the fullest," which is how are we to live our life to the fullest when we do not know the foreseeable future of the extent of our life in order to measure the "fullness" of it.

As I do believe that man was created by God as is everything in existence, I believe that only God can restore the most dreary of souls. We can expand the vast expanse of our minds and comprehend the world in ways we could not have imagined, or find someone to love with all our heart, we could devote our bodies to causes that seem to be for a greater good. In the end there's always this seeming singularity among people of wanting to have purpose for their souls. I think that in the end a person is likely to be content in two ways:

1. Not being able to fulfill the longings of his soul and accepting it, and his mortality as the eventuality of any given physical life.
2. Giving this so called "life" truly to God.

In either case, man is still fallible, but I offer these assumptions based off the common man's longing for purpose over himself. I definitely hope to be of the latter.

a voice for the voiceless

My co-worker is applying for the National Guard. It makes sense. He would be a good guy for it. He went through many of the perks to joining the military (i.e. bonuses, stipends, rank status...), and to be quite honest, it all sounded pretty appealing (mostly because the National Guard hardly sees combat). As we were talking I found that part of him wanted to join the military as a reaction to what the Tyrant leader of North Korea has threatened to do: nuke South Korea. Why? Probably not even North Korean military higher-ups know why, much less the closed-countries innocent civilians. This got me thinking.

There are so many people in the world who have a rich and dynamic story to tell - some that would set them free, and some that would get them killed. Millions live below poverty lines or under some sort of oppressive iron fist. And for what reason?

Only God knows.

As one who is not particularly fond of physical violence, my response to this issue occurs in a secret desire to document these stories; to write about the unnecessarily imprisoned. Think about it: an average day in your life produces many events (and perhaps even turn-of-events) that cause you to want to go and tell others about your story. For example, on your routine drive to work you witness a potentially fatal 5-car pile-up, leaving people screaming and cars on fire. I'd bet my 401k (ha!) that the first thing you do is tell somebody.

That said, think of the stories of North Korean mothers who are told to abort their baby daughters, or even just their second-born child. For nine months they carry a death-sentence for one who will never see the light of day. Imagine the torment, agony, and hatred that must develop for these women.

I confess, however, that to merely write for my own amusement on such an issue seems just short of malicious--I'd be a reporter of everyday destruction in the lives of people, and then I'd go home and eat dinner with my happy, white family. No. Writing has consequence, and like the odd kid out who witnesses a bully pounding a puny kid, our voicelessness exudes injustice.

All this to realize that I'm in no position to hop over enemy lines and gather the dirt, much less write about it. But I can, and I challenge you to pray and keep watch for an opportunity to be a voice for the voiceless.

Be tolerant of my [in]tolerance!

I took Jess on a small date to L.A. on Saturday night. The plan was to get dinner, a light dessert, and see a play. We did the first two, then drove around downtown for a while, finally ending up at the playhouse.

It was called "Eve's Rapture" - I'll allow the skepticism to brew within you now for a few seconds . . .

As an aside, one must go into a play like this already expecting mockery, or at least apathy toward the Faith, as A) the playhouse is in a major metropolitan city, and B) it carries a title which, in Christian circles, would be considered taboo. But if you're anything like me, a title like "Eve's Rapture" at a playhouse in Los Angeles breathes curiousity into my bones, and, well, I couldn't resist. I resolved, "Come on, how bad [meaning sacreligious] could this play really be?"

Gulch.

It was bad. It far exceeded my already low expectations. I'll spare you the details so long as you understand that the story was essentially this: Satan is seen with pity as one whom God banished to Hell void of justice; Adam and Eve were sissy-la-la, fantasy-engulfed, idiots who over-emphasized the fact that they should just be quiet because, afterall, "It's God's way"; Satan seduces (sexually) Eve; Eve rebels against God and Adam; Adam stays pious to God and is told to neither love nor hate life; Eve is liberated and becomes the supreme matriarch, eventually shooting God, Adam, and all who oppose her, and then shoots herself (because Satan, in seducing her, impregnates her, and Satan is later mentioned to be God).

I wanted to throw-up, naturally. It both sickened and saddened me. The playwrite has probably had so many horrible examples of Christianity gallavant through his life that it caused him to react, albeit in his art, by creating a new, Eden-revisited story.

All low-blows and suckerpunches aside, it was a great play, though I probably felt it was good for a different reason than other audience members did. I could see the annoyance and probable anger toward naive, and passionately ignorant Christians that the playwrite seemed to have. As I have told some of you, if I could pigeonhole this writer's greatest problem with God/Christians from one line of his play it would be this:
ADAM says to the Angel Michael, after hearing that EVE had left him and after seeing all the destruction that sin had caused: "Angel Michael, call me ignorant, but isn't it un-fair that all of humanity must suffer because of one sin? Isn't this injustice?"

I heard the playwrite loud and clear - people are inherently good, however, Christians claim that all are plagued with this "original" sin and therefore need something else to make them truly free. In his play the heroine was Eve, who succumbed her "wifely" oppression in the garden and even "killed" God. She continued saying, "I will fight for the real truth."

The real truth, to the playwrite, is actually understanding that God does not exist and that we must kill off this "God" figure if we are ever going to be truly free. If we don't we will forever be held down, oppressed, and all-in-all kept from living any kind of satisfying life.

So I am writing this to get your thoughts. Are we oppressed and kept from living the "true" life? If we believe in God, then are we cutting ourselves short of what life really has to offer?