I was sitting in Sunday School the
other morning, and our wonderful teacher was reading from Philippians
talking about joy. We were discussing the joy that Christ gives us,
and people were sharing their own joys, etc. I was quiet. I was
thinking about an article I read the day before about two guys in
California who had beaten a guy up at a baseball game so badly that
he couldn't live by himself anymore. He couldn't even go to the
bathroom by himself. They had laughed about it during their
sentencing. I was daydreaming about what it would be like to cut them
with boxcutters—long, slow, jagged cuts down their arms, across
their chests. Wondering if shear physical pain would wake them up
into remorse. I thought about how great a job that would be, to find
vile people and get physical revenge against them for aching and
hurting families. And then I shook myself out of it. Realized how
evil those thoughts were, even if I never would act on them. How Christ hadn't punished me with what I
deserved, etc. It was a little startling, but not unsurprising.
Sometimes I daydream about the most morbid things.
I have thought about how that sort of
evil can intrude upon me sometimes, which lead me to think about how
evil does intrude upon a lot of us everyday in strange ways. And
although I occassionaly to have fantastical allusions of revenge and
grandeuer, I think evil often finds me in other more subtle ways,
finds a lot of people my age that way.
Evil can find me while looking at my
beautiful wife reading to my radiant, young daughter, and instead in
revelling in it, I can ffeek restless and lonely, wanting something I
can't even articulate, feeling dissatisfied, when I have everything I
could have ever wanted out of life. It is the pea under the mattress
of my blessings. My spoiled self wondering if things could be better?
If my life seems boring? I can long for approval or attention from
people who may or may not want to give it. If I don't recognize this,
if I don't call myself out on it, it would be easy to let it take
hold. I think a lot of people my age do this. It seems like mid
thirties has become the trendy time to have a 1/3 life crisis. And
these crisies often are not just internal, philisophical battles of
the mind and heart, but seem to manifest themselves in very
dangerous, sudden, and selfish ways. Husbands leaving wives for
younger woment. Women leaving husbands for better career options, or
wealthier men. Money invested in trips, cars, casinos, bigger houses.
It's a tear that morphs into a snowball, which rages into an
avalanche.
If we allow ourselves to focus on what
we don't have, on the people who don't love us, or the people who
take advantage of us, then we simply miss the point. We miss all that
we have been provided: the people who do care and check in on us, the
fact that we are richer than 90% of the world, the tenderness between
us and our spouses that so many people ache to have everyday. It is a
slap in the face, and a dangerous row to tread. It is evil gnawing at
us. It isn't pornography, or homosexuality, it isn't stealing, or
murder
It is a tiny little want, a casual day
dream while watching tv in the dark on a Saturday night, the images
of random beautiful people outand about living life in some different
more exciting way than myself or you, and the tiny pang that
insinuates that maybe that isn't fair, or that our life is lesser for
having a different meaning, for valuing different things.
I have always been like this. Prone to
wanting something more that isn't better, or wanting something that
isn't something I should want. In my twenties it made me do really
dumb things to try and capture something ellusive, to try and give my
life some bigger meaning, or make myself look important or care free
or vibrant to some outside person that wasn't watching me really, no
matter what I thought. I see it creeping into my kids sometimes. A
student will come back to visit me or, or text me, and I can sense
that maybe things aren't great, that maybe they are a little lost, or
not happy, or just struggling with the transition, but they will just
tell me random facts that try and make it seem otherwise. As if these
little bullets of information, names of girls, sororities,
fraternities, clubs, job providers, amounts of money maid, will
impress me, or make them seem like better people to me, like they
have their act together. First off, it doesn't. I am not fooled. And
people aren't fooled when have do that. We are good at reading body
language, we are good at reading the heart. Also, it doesn't matter
if your act is together. The people who love us, love us despite the
fact that our acts are not together. My god loves me , and them,
despite the fact that my act has never and most likely will never be
completely together. What more do I want than that? What more could
I, or really anyone, ask for than a family who adores you? A job that
you really like? To be married to your favorite person in the entire
world? Does going to a bar in Lousiville on a Saturday night, and
taking mirrored, flashed, filtered selfies make me a better person?
Does it really make me more interesting? Does it give my life more
meaning? And does anyone really care if they were to see those pics
on Twitter or IG?
No.
But evilness is tricky and smart. It
doesn't come in like a tidal wave blasting the walls of your heart
away. It floats in like a grubby little snowflake—softly, quietly,
as to go unnoticed and not be wiped away quickly. Then comes another,
and then another, until our hearts and minds become silently burried
in our disastifaction and ungratefuness. Thankfully, I have been
learning to recognize these thoughts and banish them from me over the
last fifteen years , to push through the fog and see how genuinely blessed
and great my life is, but evil is tricky, and I have to stay on my
guard.
So, greatfully no thoughts of violent
retribution to report over the last couple days, and loved listening
to Mel do her Cookie Monster impersonation as she read to Maeve
tonight. I can only hope I will always be so sane and thankful for
those simple things in my life.
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