Everything I Want to Do Is a Sin... Don't Worry, Pun Intended

Big sigh. I'm an emotional fellow, what can I say? I am the middle child between two sisters, give me a break. But lately I've been stressed that I am not doing enough... in all areas of my life. Actually, it's more that I feel like I myself am never going to be worthy of satisfaction, and of rest from trying to be more than I am. The most satisfaction and contentment I feel is being with my fiance, family and close friends, nothing against any of those whom I love the most. It is a daily battle especially now that I am trying to live a dream that I had: teaching religion at the high school that I attended. But even when I'm with my fiance, my family, and close friends, I want to be even closer to them, to be even more than their friend, brother, son, and fiance. Even when I am most contented, I desire that much more happiness and fulfillment.

And so, I have come here to write and breathe as freely as possible, venting and grumbling, trying to make sense and find direction in my life. So, here goes: I just read the beginning of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin, and I am finding myself much more dissatisfied than I was before I had begun to read. I simply don't have a good grasp of reality, and finding out how strict legislation is, 7-8 years after the fact means that I am almost completely out of touch with how the world works and what is really going on in my life - at least with regards to where my food comes from. In college I got away with poorly reflecting on the current disintegration of the philosophical underpinnings of some industrialized-food systems and the more integrated underlying philosophy of fairly out-dated guidelines for monastic living. But now, I am trying harder to get more to the point: my own dissatisfaction with my day-to-day experience. I am not who I want to be for my fiance, family and friends. I want to fulfill them, and make them happy, but I can't. I want to be in constant community with them. I am trying to keep from being as dramatic as saying that I want eternal life, I want heaven now, but that's just it. I am so much of a product of my culture that I cannot help but feel the anxiety of instant gratification breathing down my neck to feel better about myself.

And now I am dissatisfied with my own blogging... who would have guessed? What a downer this is! I don't know why I do so much of this writing: do I write and think this way in order to give myself impetus to try harder, to motivate myself by anger at the injustice I am causing by not letting myself be loved properly by God, by my fiance, by my family, by my friends? Or, maybe that's even an oversimplification of the daily complications that help me to let go in the midst of confusion and frustration. It is a daily struggle for me at this point in my life not to beat myself up for failing to attain the loftiest dreams that I created in my imagination up to now: to be God (How ridiculous?! I know!). I can't remember at the moment how I got to that point.

Yesterday I was thinking that I am constantly seeking certainty about how I am fairing, always wanting to know that I am doing ok, to know that I am doing something good in my life or for someone of my place in the world. Inherently, that is backwards and mixed-up because I am seeking to compare myself to others, not accepting the mystery of the Future, a Future that is wrapped up in its own beyond-ness and other-ness. On a positive note, my mind drifts off to the words of a well-noted prayer of Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my

perils alone."

Somehow, to read someone else's experience of the uncertainty of the future, and to read them and take another perspective enables me to relax and ease back from being tense, always needing to be ready for anything so that I might be the first to pounce on that one opportunity of a lifetime... though I haven't the slightest clue what that might be or why I might have such an attitude. Hold up! I brake to a stop from riding the roller coaster that are my thoughts sometimes, about the adequacy of my life and my actions and my thoughts, and my words, and everything that I am. I just realized that it was this effort at trying to account completely for myself in the world, in anticipation of giving a full account of myself to my creator at the end of my days, that I came to write. Bound still by my own narcissism and self-centeredness, I realize a little bit more of my enslavement. I am not God, and delight in being the particular, the limited, the bound being that I am. I am grateful for my disintegration that I can be held by You, Integrity Entire and Final, that I can be with others who are like me and rest in their company. One hour of hard work here I come!

Goal for the next post: Be specific about reflecting on a real world experience.