Post 117

I ain't gonna lie, I've been feelin' pretty down and out lately. Therefore, it is time for me to write another optimistic post, just to remind myself that life is more than existence and that happiness must be generated internally. Please note that I am not trying to convince myself to be happy, to force happiness in a world of despair. No, I am merely trying to remind myself (and all of you) that life alone merits happiness and that, though despair exists in the world, it certainly should not be considered the status quo.

I regret that I don't have anything very original to say; mostly I can only combine the encouraging thoughts that various friends have given me in the last little while. First, this poem courtesy of [V]:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're treading seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest, if you must- but don't quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up, though the pace seems slow-

You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man.

Often the struggler has given up

When he might have captured the Victor's cup.

And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out-

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt-

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems afar,

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-

It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

Continuing to press forward is key, I think. A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that, so long as a ship is moving, you can steer it however you want, but rudders are useless when the vessel isn't moving, and you can crank that helm all you want to when you're sitting still, but you can't change direction unless you're moving.

I guess the idea here is to pick a direction and walk. If you stay close to God, He won't let you get too far from the path before He calls for a course correction. Movement is the important thing. Sure, running headlong in the dark is apt to lead to crashing into walls from time to time, but crashing into walls again and again is infinitely better than sitting in the mud and going nowhere simply by virtue of movement.

Sometimes our lives are not the way we wish they were. Sometimes the life we're living seems to only ever approach the life we desire asymptotically--getting closer but never getting there. I'm willing to say, though, that [feel free to disagree with me on this; please leave any dissenting opinions as comments] there is never a time in which there is nothing about our lives we can change; we can always change (and hope to improve) some aspect of life.

I was impressed by some of Confuzzled's recent Wondering wherein she talked about our ability to change our fates. This is an empowering ideal, very important to keep in mind. It is in the deception that our lives are out of our control that we start to learn helplessness. Now, granted, things like the actions of others or any addictions we develop certainly can be out of our control, but so long as we're alive, there's never a time that we can declare our battle to be lost.

And so I just keep trudging along. What else is there to do--for I refuse to give up on living, and moving forward is the only other option.