Human beings have the capacity for incredible compassion and indescribable evil. Can one even fathom the amount of faith it must take to entrust such liberty with humanity? The very idea that a creation made out of love can destroy itself with hate or evil must show the incredible importance of love to the Creator.
To allow cruelty and injustice to prosper defines what the value of choice
actually represents. The gift of choice does more than set a course for our
lives; it represents the idea that what we choose as individuals matters most
to the Creator. Obedience can be chosen or ordered, but love cannot be forced.
It can only manifest through a conscious choice.
Our hearts beat because nature dictates them to do so. They provide
compassion, forgiveness and understanding because we choose for them to.
Freewill is not so much about us choosing paths in our lives, but about
choosing the ideals and beliefs that clear paths to a greater understanding of
the definition of love.
Imagine knowing every aspect of creativity and that of logic as well. Which of the two would you choose as to how you live? How do you know the right path if they both make sense to you but for different reasons? Knowing all aspects means that they are equal in the mind, heart, and soul. Wouldn’t absolute knowledge be a curse that leaves us immobile? How does one choose between two rights when we can only follow one with true conviction? Do we follow a creative path or a reasonable and logical one? When there is no wrong choice then there is no direction.
Because we are not given absolute knowledge, we are allowed a path to choose, a destiny that has meaning and fulfillment. Each of us is given talents and intellect because it takes both to survive. But we are not given them equally. One is always stronger than the other. One offers a fulfillment that the other does not. There will be a moment in life when we will have to choose. Although neither choice offers a guarantee of monetary success, the right one does guarantee a degree of happiness that the other does not. That feeling is known as exultation.
Purpose is linked to contentment. We are not in harmony when we choose a path for safety, security or false desires. We may find elements such as monetary gain, recognition or power when we do, but those are empty idols with no fulfilling properties. As such, we continue chasing more of what we already have to fill the continuing void. Harmony rests only in our natural inclination to follow what we feel in our hearts be it logic or creativity and not what makes sense in our minds. Either way we choose, our soul will follow even in the absence of harmony. But that harmony is our map to where we are to go. The idea of happiness may be in the mind, but the reality of it lies within our choice to follow the path that was laid out for us before we were even born.
When we make room for others in our lives, we fill up spaces in our souls that might otherwise become cluttered with the baggage that accumulates in our spiritual attic over time. Life is in constant motion from our first breath to our last and within that time comes the sum of all our actions.
We have no control over the rate in which time passes, but we do have
dominion over how that time is spent. We can spend it creating baggage that we
must store in the limited spaces that are available. Or we can use that time to
share with others.
Time with others is not the creation of a burdensome load that clutters the chambers in our soul, but the expansion of a life that creates room to house the valuable relationships of love and friendship we acquire.
Happiness and misery are both results of time plus choices. When we choose
baggage, we crowd ourselves into a small existence that revolves only around
ourselves. However, when we share ourselves with others, we grow as large as we
need to be to hold all the valuables our time allows us to discover.
We lose parts of ourselves while traveling through this life. It’s probably one of the saddest realities that we must accept and certainly one for which we mourn the rest of our lives. These lost parts haunt us as a ghost who wishes to close the separation between us and what we’ve lost. But there is no unification, only the acceptance that our loss has forced us to become someone different and new.
Losing parts of ourselves, in essence, is the slow death of who we once were. Each new day we shed a bit of who we were to make room for who we are becoming. Our new experiences fill that void offering a new opportunity to be reborn and live with new perspectives. Each day new victories, losses and life experiences fill those voids and we slowly begin to live as a new people. It is because we are in a constant state of decay and regeneration that we are able to realize that growing and changing are the true miracles of life.
What we lose is never a complete end as remnants remain in our soul. Still, its overall absence pushes us into a new beginning of comprehension. In order for us to ever live life as it was intended and understand our purpose within creation, we must experience loss. It moves us into new directions of opportunity that enlighten us and affords us a new beginning which proves we are greater than all the losses taken from us combined.
Imagine you were created to achieve one incredible accomplishment. This one achievement is a link in a chain that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are gone. Your link is every bit as important as the ones before it and just as crucial for the next. Our understandings and meanings of life, as well as our ability to grow as one, are in this chain that links past to present, present to future and future to comprehension.
This chain is unique in the sense that it does not need to be connected by each link to be functional. So each time there is a missing or broken link, a new section begins leaving a void between the two sections. Because of this, as the chain stretches out across time, there are gaps between the missing and broken links. And once they are broken or missing, they cannot be replaced. Time does not reverse and allow us to repair the chain. What should be there is not and only a dead space is left in its place.
Each time we fail in our hopes, give up, take an innocent life, corrupt what is good or pure and fail to achieve our purpose in life, we are not achieving our one task that is to be our accomplishment, but instead destroying a link and leaving that dead space between links. As a result, what we were supposed to contribute to life never materializes and future links to connect with are absent.
Each link is knowledge, wisdom and an accomplishment that the next generation uses to further the chain. Each of us is responsible to add a link to the chain while also helping others to do the same. Missing links leave us lost and disconnected from the past and each other. So when we ask ourselves why our lives seem to have no reason to them, perhaps it is because we are the start of a new section of chain that was broken because of someone else’s failure to provide the link we needed to connect with. If we can all just remember how important our contribution to the chain is, then undoubtedly we can create one that is never broken.
Each of us seeks treasure. We work for it, sacrifice for it, even take risks for it. But have we ever actually defined what is treasure? What we desire is not necessarily treasure although it feels as though it should be or that it will be once we have obtained the desire. But what if the hunt for treasure is actually just a phantom we chase? Although treasure is real, it is not hidden in some distance destination or achieved dream. It is found in our perceptions and understandings.
We actually stumble over treasure in our attempts to find it. We occasionally experience treasure but rarely enjoy it for the riches it brings because we are stepping over what is valuable in order to dig in the dry sand. The truth is that each of us is born with treasure inside us. The search for what is valuable has never been about what we can find on the outside, but what we should discover on the inside.
Everything natural and man-made crumbles or rusts away in time but our essence, our energy, lives on indefinitely and with it is the treasure given to us by our Creator. We are tasked with finding those riches and sharing them with others before our existence here is returned to dust. Every experience in our lives are markings on an ancient map to the whereabouts of the treasure within us. We will never find that most valued of treasure in the earth beneath our feet because it only exists beneath the meaning of our very creation.
We should never hold someone else to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. We should not expect more from them than we ourselves are willing to be, give or do. Sometimes that standard can come in the form of an example and often times in a word. Those simple gestures or words form building blocks which allow negativity to move forward and build foundations upon us.
It is imperative that we acknowledge our mistakes. Not just so we can learn from them but so we can forgive ourselves and be forgiving when others make their mistakes. There is no greater equality than that which is in forgiveness. It reminds us that we have all been, without exception, guilty of transgression and victims of its consequences.
Through forgiveness, we find that we do not have to endure a life of crushing rubble which keeps us down preventing us from rising above negativity. Instead, we can move forward and raise humanity’s standards by simply standing on the belief that our imperfect nature makes us perfectly equal.
Success is not about big goals that one accomplishes which are planned for years. It’s about getting out of bed in the morning when the only thing you want to do is sleep and hide from the world. It’s about rising up and putting your feet on the floor when yielding to a feeling of failure seems normal. It’s about forcing a laugh when crying feels more natural. It’s about living through each day when death seems the only way to peace. This is success!
Success is a relative term but most will agree that it is defined as the accomplishment of something, an achievement even. In other words, it’s something that is gained. To some this is all it will ever be. But to others, it is not about the gain, but about battling the losses and continuing the fight. Their success is not defined by moving forward, but by not falling backward. It’s a different world for those who give all just to maintain than it is for those who push forward with ease.
Success cannot be defined with one global meaning because individual meanings should only be defined by the particular obstacles each one of us must endure. There are as many worlds to live in as there are people on the planet. Each of us must overcome the obstacles in our own existence and each of must choose what we deem as a success based on those difficulties. Our happiness depends not on the obstacles in our lives but in the fact that we don’t allow them to keep us from us challenging them. Success should not be a definition for all to agree but a new cause each of us redefine every day.
All circumstances pass away, they live and die within the moments that age us all. What is happening in this space and time will fade away and only the residue will remain. In each moment we must remember this truth. When we look over our lives and that of history, we see parcels of time where things were good or bad to different degrees. Those moments become lost in days and those days may become wrapped up in months and even into years. That period of time is remembered as a circumstance in our lives.
No matter how violent or frightening a circumstance is, it always fades into the dust of time. We then move forward as tomorrow pulls us out of yesterday bringing the residue of that circumstance with us but leaving the physical aspect of that time behind. That time in our lives then becomes a phantom that no longer harms us unless we allow it to haunt us and taunt the residue that is left inside us.
The evils of yesterday always reach beyond the grave to draw us back because of our unwillingness to let go of a memory or tragedy that no longer has any physical power over us. The very concept of a sunrise and sunset are that all things have a beginning and an end. Although thunderstorms will still come, they will not be yesterday’s storms. And in time, those new storms too will fade away in a future sunset. We must always carry with us that each new sunrise is our reminder to not be pulled out of yesterday but to willingly step anew into tomorrow.
It is not from the evil of this world in which we are defined. Those acts of atrocity against humankind, the crimes of individuals in our everyday lives and the will of those to bring conflict and suffering are not who we are as a whole. They are mere slivers of a broken world which obstruct a clear view of what is mostly wholesome and good.
Our collective identity lies with those who work hard with pride and integrity to provide a living for those whom they love. It is apparent in the forgiveness that is given when forgiving is the most difficult of tasks and in the examples of our choices when the easiest choice is one that we choose not to be an option.
It is also in the kindness that we teach to our children who learn all too soon that the world is not a fair and just place and all too often not worthy of kindness and mercy. Further still, it lies the faith of those same children who continue the teachings of grace and mercy in spite of this knowledge.
So much of what we experience seems of a dark nature. We are engulfed in a world that appears to be crumbling but the fact that we still feel shocked and shame at the sight of evil is proof that immorality has not become commonplace in our hearts and minds and an accepted as a way of life. It is a belief that good does win out over evil and that we choose to rise above that which attempts to destroy us while building a future that will never crumble into dust.
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