As the years go by you realize so much of your life is shaped by accidental events that require you to react to them, the notion of planning and shaping your life into something meaningful becomes a non sequitur. If this be true, then what is left? The answer to the question is for a lifetime to reveal.
We hear so much of goals and how important they are to finding success. Secretly, I sometimes think that so much of our stress is grounded in chasing goals for which we have neither the inclination nor aptitude.
We humans have so much difficulty in accepting the natural talents we were given in our DNA. As you observe people over the years it becomes clear that so many of us are working against the natural talents we have been given.
So many of us are spending our days doing things that don’t make us comfortable or fulfilled. Why? The question has perplexed me for years.
I suspect it starts with the early impressions we are all left with from our childhood. The need for acceptance teaches most of us early on that the affirmation we need comes from fulfilling the wishes and needs of the prominent adults in our lives.
As we grow older the need for affirmation transfers to the adult institutions in our lives: our cultural values, our work place, our church, our select group of friends and always present, the imprint within us shaped by our early years with our families. By this time the need for survival takes hold and the imprints are too grounded to change into what should have been.
Of course all of this creates the filter by which we judge and view all of the feelings and activities we experience in our journey to the end. This filter shapes our particular prejudices and perspectives, both individually and collectively. While this seems so obvious, it also remains so obscure.
Primarily because it is the subtle, but always present, static that plays in the background of our thinking process. It numbs us into submission and deludes us with its seeming virtuous resignation. We grow so use to its presence we ignore its significance. However we do so at our own peril.
There is a noted exception to this model. There are a few amongst us who see correctly and know what they do to survive is essentially meaningless to them other than providing a means to and end. They do not embellish, or try to justify their activities in “service for society” or other grandiose terms.
A means to an end becomes their justification, and stoic acceptance of this fact creates its own type of begrudging affirmation. Though not completely free, they may be the freest among us. And that is worth a great deal.
Brother Franco, Pizzaonian News Service -PNS
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