In truth, I would have to describe the defining the character of the past year of my life as sadness. Or bitterness. Frankly, I was just negative in nearly every aspect. I was always sorry for what I'd done or what had happened; or, I was angry at people or situations which I could not bend to my convenience and satisfaction.
The events that I blamed for my poor disposition did, in fact, dissipate long before I stopped using them as a crutch. The beef was squashed, but I couldn't throw it away. I dug through it to find any foul particle I could, and I swallowed it all, bit by bit, to keep the ill feeling in my stomach from going away.
Wow, what a gross metaphor.
Point being that I induced my own misery every chance that I got. I constantly stirred up old quarrels and unpleasant feelings so I could cling to them for dear life, because every other part of me was dead. My faith lied helpless and buried beneath the carcasses of passion, sympathy, desire, even complacency. So many interests I once held ceased in action, and in their places rose a sharp need for anything that made me feel like I had a purpose, no matter how insignificant or petty. So, I claimed I was seeking resolution for the conflicts in my life.
Sometimes, though, conflicts must, for a time, go unresolved. And sometimes we create conflicts in our minds that don't actually exist.
I see now the void that I was desperately trying to fill, and I also see now the proper way to fill it. I invited sadness to reside in my heart and mind, and I'm having a hard time kicking it out; but it's going. In its place I've invited joy.
I take joy in simple things, like my two working legs that carry me wherever I'd like to go; but I'm also beginning to see the joy in the big picture: my life, which my Creator has so intricately and deliberately placed in the world, and every small and large event of my 18 years and 10 months of living that has given me the opportunity and the motivation to act upon what I love for the higher purpose of Love itself.
I'm not calling this optimism- I know that bad things are ahead. Bad things are always ahead. I'm calling it the slow accumulation of wisdom and appreciation and contentment of and in the events of my life and the purpose to which I've been set.
Never again will I call on sadness to sustain me, I no longer have need of it.
