HEADLINES
It always comes down to the decision,what am I about?
The number of children that will die today is more than I can picture; that another half a million have just filed, for unemployment benefits in the U. S.,means that many more households are facing despair; youths in U. K.; sense things aren’t right, but they don’t know how to handle the uncertainty, so they riot. Just three, out of so many.
I feel submerged when I read headlines; meaninglessness, sadness, pain, futility, fear, and more; what should be my reaction? Whether I like it, or not, that decision of how I see the world, is mine.
I have three very different friends; one sees doom and gloom, the path we travel is headed to destruction, he just doesn’t like this present world, he is a conservative; another dispels the news as being distorted, things are not as awful as they appear, don’t let emotions take over; she is a someone who must be in absolute control; a third is angry with the constant stupidity and cupidity of others, he still has tantrums over his long divorced wife, he is about judging and blaming the others, of which there is no shortage.
If the previous comes across as judgmental and arrogant, I want to add that those one or two word summaries do not represent all that these friends are; rather, it is to pick characteristics to use in a simple argument, and for a simple decision of but one area of my life. These people are as multi-faceted as any I know, as any of one of us. And I care for them.
I have worn all of these personas, felt that that each was absolutely the right way for me to be, at that time. Now I see unhappy chapters, once written, now closed.
I want be another way, one less distressing; than gloom or control or scolding. That choice is up to me, how to view, and then to feel, each and every situation.
Overwhelming sadness is certainly appropriate; children dying, good people who want to work but can’t, confusion because there is absence of meaning, these certainly are hard situations. “Yet, out of sadness, so deep that it is beyond tears, hope arises”. What do I do make of this hope?
My decision is to accept painful events, even as I have hope; my paradox; like rubbing my belly while patting my head.
Meaninglessness is our state; as uncomfortable as this idea is, it is so. Not to mean that we don’t dress up our lives, playing various roles in this great play; but, in the end, accept meaninglessness–and then get over it. Paul Tillich knew that; without man, God is irrelevant, as true an idea as it is impossible to refute,or perhaps fully understand. Go with the God that is beyond God.
So, my decision is to accept what is in front of me, accept how unable I am to alter anything but my own actions; and then get on with it, there is a life to live.
