Life gets hard. Love can be brutal... Change is necessary. Logical deduction causes us to sit back and weigh out the pros and cons, and make a decision... then face confusion head on as our stomach turns and mind races. Good decisions don't always cut that string attached to a switch, wired to the heart, ready to be pulled. When abruptly triggered, it causes the heart to miss just one beat... which is just enough to bring you spiraling back to that exact moment when you carefully placed all those pros and cons on to the scale... and you can't help but wonder if the scale was off.
I think our logic is off, and it leaves us uncertain.
"I made the right decision, right?"
Maybe we could benefit from the logic of the economist. That we derive value, based not simply on pros and cons, but on scarcity and real cost. That a resources value is based on how renewable, hard to find, how limited it is, and if there are any close substitutes. Then on top of that, the real cost of time and energy involved in the searching for this resource. If you think of life that way, I'm pretty sure you'll find that love is more scarce than anticipated, and grossly undervalued. Even the most tainted of loves... the most dysfunctional... if there is any true substance of love, any morsel, then the value is undefined... because the real cost of healing is always underestimated, and you can never get it back, but instead you hope for a better close substitute. One that is a little more sustainable.
Thinking of things like this, and of addiction, disturbs me. What makes me think of these kinds of things? What binds people to an insatiable itch. An itch they can never scratch enough. They scratch away, just to try to feel normal, or to feel nothing. The goal is always to try to get back to a point where life made sense, and everything was okay.
I think this is kinda what Jesus was talking about when He spoke about the faith like a child. How peace comes from the simplicity of true acceptance in things greater than us, and how little control we have. Taking life and love at face value, with no need to doubt. Pure love. Pure joy. Pure laughter. Pure trust. Not ignorant, but beautifully aware, that uncertainty is okay, because love is real and underlines everything you know.
I think that at some point we all lose the magic of youth. Then most people spend the rest of their lives trying to get back to that beautiful simplicity... where it was so easy to love and laugh and trust and share and play. Some turn to substances, others to intellect and arts... then down the road they trade those for materialistic ambitions... where midlife crisis's are inevitable, as true values are never achieved, and they only get fuzzier and less defined... more confusing and complicated.
In all my searching, I've seen much beauty, and know of a cure. I wish I could stand at street corners and hand it out to everyone... but sometimes it's such a large pill to swallow. Even for myself, as it truly means giving up, letting go... raising your hands to someone much bigger than yourself, and believing that they will pick you up... and make you able to love, trust, and laugh.
I'm not sure what it will take for you to believe in yourself. I know you feel that the cost of change was grossly misrepresented, I understand that. Even if the next steps don't lighten up, trust me, the ones after that will make it all worth while.
Simplicity of heart is on its way.
Truth brings beauty to the motion of life.
I pray that you keep letting the truth in,
and get a glimpse of how beautiful you are.
love
