Never enough<\/p>\n
Not so long ago, I came to the conclusion that I am a deeply unsatisfied person. Almost at any given moment, I am thinking of how that moment could be better. How I could be doing something, being something, or experiencing something higher.<\/p>\n
I usually consider it my own fault\u2014that I am not organized enough to be the best self I can be. Or perhaps I am lazy and slothful. And St. Paul\u2019s words echo in my mind: the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do [Romans 7:19]<\/p>\n
I never get around to doing what I want to do, but all the shit I say I will stop doing\u2014that\u2019s what I end up being very faithful with.<\/p>\n
For these and many other reasons, I figured out that I am just an unsatisfied person. This will not change, and I had better find a way of living with it.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean that I don\u2019t have things I enjoy. There are also the exciting and exceptional moments of action that absorb my total attention. Sometimes I get in the zone while writing; very very often when I am dancing I am utterly taken away, and sometimes a project can fill me and satisfy me well.<\/p>\n
But those are rare and precious moments. For all the other moments, I am wishing for the higher thing\u2014the greater, the more.<\/p>\n
I was trying to explain this to Chris. The explanation went somewhat awry, since he is a sweet and wonderful man who wants me to be happy. For him, it is not a good thing for me to be unsatisfied. It is a problem, and must be fixed.<\/p>\n
We are both interested in my happiness\u2014he even more than I. But this new understanding I had about my nature seemed both under and over the stuff of \u201chappiness.\u201d Metaphysical realities are not so susceptible to temporal fixes.<\/p>\n
But what was it I had really discovered? What did I mean by all this? Maybe it is really a personal problem, something that pills or prayer would fix.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was all in my head.<\/p>\n
But then I read this from John Stuart Mill<\/a>:<\/p>\n It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.<\/p>\n But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.<\/p>\n It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mill, no fool, got it! I discovered my dissatisfaction on my own, but I am not on my own in the feeling.<\/p>\n AND I am a \u201chighly endowed being.\u201d I\u2019ll take that.<\/p>\n Of course, I am also required with my endowments, to bear all the imperfections I so keenly perceive. That brings my mind back to the Bible, this time the red letters of Jesus\u2019s words: I guess the Endower of my gifts would have a right to require me to do something with them.<\/p>\n And I would not have it any other way. I want to be and make the best of myself that I can.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll just have to find a way to bear my imperfections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Never enough Not so long ago, I came to the conclusion that I am a deeply unsatisfied person. Almost at any given moment, I am thinking of how that moment could be better. How I could be doing something, being … Continue reading
\nFor unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. [Luke 12:48]<\/p>\n