Day 3847 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 73:5 NIV

The Illusion

One that’s most definitely designed inside our common delusion as is all but demanded of what’s a life lived upended by everything from what all we have to all we don’t as measured by all those around us who’ve not what we do and yet too have what we’ve not. And it’s this endless comparison as is so commonly considered somehow conducive to not only a life being lived but in fact the only way to win one lived well that’s left us so unwell that we’re a well of both worry and want.

All drawn as if water from what is an emptiness that we can’t seem to see anymore.

Simply because we’re so blinded by this one lie that all we can see is our lives and either what all they’re lacking in terms of the bests so many other are so clearly living and thus apparently able to afford or all with which they are so miserably filled as measured by the lack looked at in the lives of those same others as are apparently so without reproach and reprimand that they’ve had forever in their hand only what a soul could want and a lack of only all that none do.

Yes, such is the lie that we see through. It’s this illusion as designed beside a delusion as is always defined by a general disagreement as to the current content of our constant. Indeed, all we see in life is that ours are constantly struggling whilst everyone else seems to know only the very success and comfort that we wish so badly to experience if even just for a day in what would then so clearly be a wonderful relief from the many weights we carry and all those ways in which they bring us daily to worry.

What must it be like to be they who have no such experience with all the struggles we do, the mistakes we know, the lack we’ve learned and the life we’ve lost to all the above? With what must that existence consist in which nothing seems known of never going it alone, never feeling not at home, never tasting the marrow of what’s a life lived bone to bone as we suffer alone in what is a home of hardship and tragedy?

How easy must it be to awake every single day only to see the sun shining so perpetually that the darkness of doubt and dread never meet us in bed when once we go to sleep at what is then only the end of another day spent inside such wealth and safety that misery is foreign thought as spoken in a language the same?

For I’m not a foreigner to forlornment. No stranger to struggle. No alien to alienation as is so rare in this nation anymore. No, it seems that so many have life so well figured that they’ve left only to worry about facts and figures as are found as if the foundation of all they do being thus then done so very right and always so well that again they even lack that well-known worry of being weighed and found being wrong even though they aren’t.

A worry well-known by only one.

Issue then is that we sadly also seem to assume that said one is always us.

After all, we’re the only one who knows our struggles. We’re the only one who knows our sufferings. We’re the only one who sits daily with our sorrows here in these shadows of both a soul’s sadness and a society of such success that excess is all everyone else seems to know. And as a folk who’ve so come to so equate success with living right, we’re left at quite the loss as to how we might be facing and feeling so much that’s so bad when we too seem only to always see that we’re not really doing all that bad ourselves.

It’s as if we’re each Job and thus sitting persistently inside sackcloth and ashes with only the wonder as to both how it all went so wrong and why we deserve to endure such miseries considering how we’ve never done anything but our every very best in terms of upholding what we’ve always known was so supremely important that we gave it all we had to give inside each and every moment spent so faithfully worried about doing right that we surely couldn’t have gotten anything so very wrong as to have wound up where we are in what is again a life lived within a perpetual loss of everything better.

Because surely we deserve better than this.

Surely we’ve earned some measure of success. Surely our devotion to a life void of common commotion should afford for us a front seat to God’s favor. Surely our dedication to seeking and serving all we’ve deemed worthy of such an intent vocation has a value able to trade for what should be by now far easier days, sort of like those lived by everyone else.

And thus enters the illusion into us and we then into the delusion.

And that for all sorts of reasons and thus in more ways than we could ever imagine.

Because no, we’re not owed anything be it good or bad as we’re rather just a people put here for a reason we should otherwise spend all of our time both trying to find and then fighting to uphold. And no, we’re not good at that as we’ve lived what’s long been a life spent bouncing from one ideal or idol to the next, assuming always inside each is that meaning of life for which we feel the need to reach. And no, truth is we couldn’t reach for it if even we could find it as both our arms are too short and our hands too weak to ever dare hold something so heavy as the gravity we’ve been given.

For no, we might shouldn’t be here in what is a life spent inside a struggle so deep that the surface of even peace we’ve seemingly never seen.

Because if we’re unable to endure this test, well then what should ever dare imagine we could deserve of rest?

Rest from what?

See, that’s one part of the delusion designed inside this illusion that tells us that everyone else’s life is just so much better than ours. It’s this idea that they’re all here resting from such things as want and worry. It’s this theory that tells us constantly that those around us have it far better than us as is indeed quite daily evidenced inside the highlight reels that now form what’s anymore basically the only window through which we see the world. It’s a thought as bought from those who’ve more with which to buy what we too would like as is only ever to be forever afforded with this currency of jealousy.

Yes, all of us have known well that life lived quite jealous of those around us and the ease in which they seem to slide through this life.

What must it be like to be them in what’s then a life apparently so great that our own never thus can be?

After all, if all that’s ever considered good is but what another already has then we can never know anything of the gain that is contentment as we’ll rather know only forever that desire to have something more, something better than what we have or even who we try and become. For if all we ever care to be is but a reflection of the perfection of someone else inside a life we cannot live seeing as we are not them, well then we will never know anything of happiness either as, well, like it or not we’re stuck with us for the moment.

Question then is how long will said moment last and if there’s then anything we can do about that.

And no, I don’t mean in terms of making those frequent moments spent in misery speed up nor those indefinably rare caught in the air breathed without a care slow down.

I’m talking about learning to be happy and finding peace perhaps even despite the place we’re in and how miserable it is.

Because the truth is that we can’t change the cards we’re dealt in life. But we can have a say in how we play the hand. And yet the problem is that we’ve often resorted to only folding and never then knowing what could have come would we have bet on ourselves to become the victors who then win over those who were only bluffing.

For that’s the truth of this reality.

It’s all a bluff.

It’s the stuff of fluff, this idealized way of life in which so many others seem always so perfect. It’s smoke and mirrors, make up and make belief that makes us up to be the ones who always believe in the lies the world sets daily before our eyes in these stories of these apparently perfect lives that not just some are living but in fact all. It’s all a lie as there is no perfect life. There is no peaceful life. There is no protected life protected from life and how it’s to be lived in what is a world that just doesn’t care anymore.

There isn’t even a normal life.

There is just life and we’d be far better off to just live it then as opposed to giving it away inside this endless comparison as is achieving only a disillusionment that’s left us defining us as those losing it whilst everyone else is always only finding what we somehow never can.

Do we really believe that? Or are we just so used to the lying that we know now only to lie to ourselves too?

You know, I’ve believed it. I’ve believed in that estimation of life in which everyone else had it better that me. I’ve spent time looking around at all these more perfect lives and wondered why the same I could never find. I’ve often wondered what I might need to do, to try, to change, to hide in order to finally find that way of life in which I knew that same unworried way that I see everyone else almost always enjoying.

If they figured it out, why can’t I?

Because it’s a lie.

For there is no such thing as a life lived unworried. There is no life spent outrunning regret. There is no existence in which peace and protection from this world’s elements is guaranteed. There’s no such thing as a walk walked without the weight of wonder over why it’s worth it anymore, as to why we ought to continue to endure what is a path in which each and every step seems to bring us only closer to every horror we could never want to continue to find.

Because surely we’re the ones who’ve already endured enough that we should be able to just amble out the rest of our days in those unburdened ways of those living unworried lives free then from everything from fear to failure.

Because we’re the ones who’ve already known them enough whilst everyone else seemingly hasn’t.

So it’s their turn to face the flame of a life going up in smoke.

You know, just yesterday I was given the opportunity to pick up a new lawn for my little lawn care business, and I was excited to do so as it meant both more work for me, the chance to make something look good and yet one more chance to make a bit and help my family. But as I drove up and got out and walked around to check out the task ahead I saw only something I instantly considered unfair. This was a jungle, a mess of weeds and neglect that I just couldn’t accept.

Who would allow this to become so bad and then ask me to be the one left to sort it out?

Yes, why should I have to shoulder another’s refusal to be my sort of responsible?

A thought bought because I apparently still believe that I alone am the only one who knows anything of both responsibility and the struggling that it brings. After all, it seems everyone else just shrugs this sort of thing off onto those willing to endure it.

Sort of like we did to Jesus.

Indeed, we asked, well more like insisted that He go ahead do the suffering for us as, well, we didn’t really see that we deserved any in what were somehow lives being lived so perfectly that we must have then actually been a member of that clan who were living those better lives that all of the sudden we cannot seem to find.

Strange how that works.

How life is going perfectly whenever the topic of making mistakes or doing wrong is being considered and yet too life is all but unraveling whenever we’re thinking about or discussing how it’s going. Yes, we can both do no wrong but so often feel as we find nothing but ourselves being exactly that. We can do no wrong but find that we often feel as if we’re still being wronged anyway. All because we’ve become convinced that there’s supposed to be this degree of fairness in life as is always defined by what we alone think is fair.

Leaving us in the fancy chair doling out the expectation we have, and clearly expect to be met, in what is then a life always lived as if we deserve nothing but the bests we see in those living lives of perpetual rest and none then of the unrest we’ve known enough of in our own.

Yes, we’ve tasted apparently our share of the struggle and we’re thus tired of watching everyone else live that kind of life that seemingly knows nothing of it.

And that’s just not fair.

And thus we delve to deciding to play the hand in whining and moaning and feeling sorry for ourselves.

All because we think that those around us are actually living the lives they show us.

Friends, when will we understand that nearly everything in this world is a lie? Sure, some of them may be harmless as are offered only to help keep us from knowing the horror that is often the harshness of truth. But the fact remains that so much is often hidden behind bright lights and big screens. So much is going on behind the scenes we see.

In fact, the truth is that everyone is struggling with something. And even further, that vast majority of that struggling is always done only under the surface and perhaps not even known by those closest as we tend to keep most things close to the vest, hidden away inside our chest so as to not force our fears or failures into the worries of those around us.

No, we want everyone else to think we’re doing just fine. And thus we ourselves are the very ones who contribute to the lie of this perfect life. All because we either want to seem like we’re doing okay to those who probably aren’t or that we’re definitely not to those pretending they are.

And thus life itself has dissolved into a mass of dishonesty in which we daily determine our ways and wording based upon how or what we perceive another is doing. If they’re one of the most who seem to know nothing of struggle, then we show ourselves as struggling so as to gain their empathy, their pity, their apology. And yet if we see another struggling we pretend that we aren’t so that we can feel as if we can help them by giving them our pity, our often empty empathy.

For the truth is that we often don’t care what another is going through as we know only to worry about what we are.

And we sure can make mountains out of ant hills!

And then we dare ask God to move them so that we won’t have to as, again, that would just be unfair.

And we’ve known plenty of life’s unfairness already, leaving us thus overdue for our share of the easy days and brighter ways in which we seem to see everyone else always living.

So much so that it can even dilute our appreciation for our being given something we’ve asked for. It’s like that lawn example I mentioned above. I noted how I was excited, thankful even to have this new chance to do what I enjoy doing. And yet I dared to measure this gift against the fairness I felt it wasn’t in regard to how out of control this yard was.

Even thought about walking away and not trying as, well, to me it didn’t seem like they would really care if I did.

Then I learned a bit of the story.

Yeah, I know nothing of struggle. I’m the one who’s been living the better life than so many others have had the chance to. I’m the one who hasn’t endured my share of strife in life. No, I’m the one who has so often been the one lying in what’s been a life spent both as if I were perfect and yet always miserable for some reason.

Friends, there’s been one perfect life lived. And it didn’t have anything to do with money. Didn’t have anything to do with fame. It didn’t know some mythical path free from rain or pain. It wasn’t lived by someone who didn’t hurt, who didn’t suffer, who wasn’t miserable and cold and tired and alone and even worried. Yes, Jesus worried. Jesus even cried!

Jesus even died in what remains one of the most singularly gruesome forms of blatant murder in all of human history.

And He endured it all to set us free to come unto that life as is promised in that place in which both peace is promised and thus problem isn’t found.

And yet we live as if we have it bad.

All because still we care to give so much of our time to comparing our lives to those of those being lived far better by those around us.

Friends, everyone hurts. Everyone hopes. Everyone knows plenty of misery in life, and so we are not alone in our struggles found in between striving and strife. We have to stop living this life looking at the lies so many others are sharing because such dishonesty will only ever prove to keep us discontent with our own. And discontentment is a cancer that spreads without care as to what all it consumes.

Our continuing to compare our lives to those around us will only eat us alive and leave us for dead still inside that illusion that tells us there is here a way in which we could avoid the misery of which we’ve already known far too much.

A life without pain is not possible. At least not here.

So why then worry so much about what does happen here or what we go through until we’re gone?

Why not worry about where we get to go and try our best then to help others know they can come to?

After all, we’re all here looking for the same things in life. Problem is most are still convinced that money can buy them. And that problem will remain so personal because we know we can’t while we seem to see that everyone else is. All because we think they have it better than us when in reality we’re all just living in what is just a different version of the same confusion.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold