Questions from a young reader: What keeps you pressing on?
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post::You can read the start, and an explanation, of this short series here.::
What keeps you pressing on? With everywhere that I have been, and everything that I do, I often become discouraged by my own apathy. I have so many ideas, yet no way of putting them into practice1. I question every decision I make and pick apart everything thought I have. Is that even remotely healthy?
You wondered how I keep pressing on, concerned with apathy and how much you question yourself in all things. I spend much of my life collapsing under the wrong crosses that I've foolishly decided to pick up daily, and so far, too much of my time is wasted not on pressing on but being pressed down. Jesus' yoke is light. I make it heavy.
Apathy is a way of trying to survive all of the knives thrown at you -- knives of fear, failure, shame, injustice, insecurity -- to care so much is too much, it seems, and so I, at least, start to care about nothing. Life hurts too much sometimes, and when that overload happens, when I am overwhelmed, I shut down. I don't care about anything because I can't handle caring about everything.
Which, of course, is not how life is supposed to be. It's a gift, not a sentence in prison.
My best antidote for apathy is to start small. I can't help every person, for example, but I can at least smile at the over-worked clerk and try to pass on peace. I can help one child. I can care on a small level and see where that takes me. I can't save the group, but I might be able to save the individual person. I can't solve the entire mess, but I might be able to do one little thing that helps. A kind of anti-apathy butterfly effect.
I just wrote an email to a friend talking about the race of life, which seems to be fitting here since "pressing on" indicates some kind of race. My biggest mistake, always, is thinking that I'm running against other people. You know, living comparatively, seeing how I don't measure up to them. They're doing the same inside, of course, which makes it all ironic and circular. Which makes it not just a race, but a competitive rat race.
Life wasn't meant to be that. It's a gift. We all win for just having it. There are no losers.
There's nothing wrong with questioning my own thoughts, ideas, and motives in a controlled amount, but if I'm doing it in reaction to what someone else is doing or in reaction to how someone else has made me feel, any answer I get from the question is useless. I've already started down a destructive path. Either I or the other person will end up the loser.
I always over-think. I make things that are black and white into full-blown color. I make things more difficult, I make my own life and relationships more difficult. I am contorted into the unfortunate position of trying to see all sides of a multi-faceted issue; there's no movement from that position. It is paralyzing. And it also contributes to apathy. It takes a strange kind of courage -- one not necessarily valued today -- to stop thinking and just do something. To make the leap. It takes work to leap like that.
It is difficult to self-extract from such a place. I haven't figured out how to do that reliably, and in the process of trying to figure it out...I over-think. I think that I need a calming presence in my life to allow me to just be, obviously forgetting that Jesus is wanting to do just that.
Mainly, I have to remind myself that the race isn't with other people. It's with ourselves. I don't press on in competition with someone else. I press on in a struggle to overcome the unique burdens I am carrying, those wrong crosses I kept picking up.
| Last question |
-----------------------
1 For a take on this in regards to creative blocks and how to get pass the idea of not finishing anything, read this post. I wasn't sure if that was part of the question. I did not include it in the main body of the answer above for that reason.
-----------------------
1 For a take on this in regards to creative blocks and how to get pass the idea of not finishing anything, read this post. I wasn't sure if that was part of the question. I did not include it in the main body of the answer above for that reason.
Labels: essay, personal, reader input, religion
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 8/16/2007 02:15:00 PM
SHARE THIS POST: Facebook | Stumble It! | Del.icio.us | DiggIt! | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | Newsvine
Like this post? Subscribe to the feed.
Click here to help support this site.
| Go to the Main Page of this blog. |
