The other day I was talking with a good friend of mine who had just had a really cool "win" professionally. I was pumped for him. As we were talking, he commented that it seemed like the good things that happen in life don't have nearly the same degree of impact as the bad things.
He mentioned how celebs like Tiger or Madonna will sometimes talk about how they're never satisfied, there's always more they feel like they need to achieve to feel good about themselves.
"Some people say they don't get it," he said, "but I totally do. Something good happens and it feels good for about an hour, but then there's always the question--what's the next thing?"
This conversation has been ringing in my head for the past couple of days. Why is it that the bad seems to impact us disproportionately? And why is it that the good seems to pass so quickly?
So here are a couple of arm-chair musings, take them for what they're worth.
1. We were made to run on joy. So when the good happens, in some ways it's what "normal" should be, so the impact doesn't last.
So my car is made to run on gas. Occasionally I'll put 93 octane in there, but it's all just gas. Even the occasional 93 octane doesn't make that much difference for the long haul.
But say I took a bunch of my kids Capri-Suns, managed to figure out how to get those straws in there without poking the hole all the way through the back, and then filled the tank with Capri-Sun.
The damage done to the car running on Capri-Sun is vastly disproportionate to the good done to the car running on gas.
So it is with us. When good happens, it's what's we were made for. Worth celebrating, but really just how we were made to roll. When bad happens, it cogs the machine of our souls in a way that does disproportionate damage.
2. Given that we live in the Land of the Ruins, it is part of God's gift to us that nothing here ever satisfies for long. If it did, we would settle permanently for this life.
C.S. Lewis once famously wrote:
"...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
It's good news for us in the end that life here doesn't satisfy. If it did, we would settle for making mud pies in the slums.
We are supposed to be somewhat dissatisfied with most everything here in the Land of the Ruins. It's designed to make us long for what we were made for.
Feel free to pass this along to Tiger, I think he might need to hear it.
1 comment:
Love it. Brought up some interesting thoughts about your nemesis that I wrote about over on my site.
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