Day 4026 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:16 NIV

For life isn’t life

At least not the way(s) in which we’ve come to live it. Rather it feels as if life itself is anymore but a victim of the many things in which and with which and for(?) which we all seem as if we’re trying not to lose it. Because that’s pretty much all that it seems we’re trying to do these days. And yet as we sit here at what is the start of what will probably amount to most as just another yesterday, well, it seems then that all we can find, know, be or become is but whatever it is that it already was.

And this is because it seems that all but all of life has become just a routine in which we do always the same things seeking the same things that we’ve either already sought or indeed previously found.

And sure, perhaps we’re assured that whatever it is that we’re either looking for or rather now looking not to lose thanks to our having found the same, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we have somehow stumbled unto, onto, into the best way to live a life. This pattern that we’re all living all but daily repeating, maybe it is that best that we can do or find or feel. We might have indeed found the very best thing(s) in life and for which then to live one.

Problem is that so long as there’s nothing new under the sun, well, so too then shall there be nothing better either. And again, maybe that sounds like the final arrival at the overall highly-touted finish line that it seems that most folks are scrambling to find. And, if so, then good on you. Congrats on having found or become or experienced or tasted or learned or lost all that you’ve ever wanted!

I truly mean that.

If this world as it sits and your life as it is is truly all you wish for the both to ever be, then enjoy your winnings my friend!

I just can’t seem to see it from where I am.

Because, and I know it not a goal in the grand scheme, but I’ve not been happy in years. I’ve not felt good in months. I’ve not known laughter for more than a moment or two at most for quite some time now. I haven’t been able to enjoy much as rather it seems that enjoyment is something that has become this game of cat and mouse in which I either chase it or it chases me and yet we never ever seem to see one another at all.

It all just continues to fall.

And I both know why it does but I often don’t understand why it must. Because, and again, this is yet another something that isn’t really a goal in life, but I can’t help but find my find scrambling violently for some semblancing of normal as I used to know it. And I know, remember Lot’s wife and don’t ask why the past was seemingly better than the now. I get all of that as, well, yeah, the past wasn’t all our tendency toward nostalgia’s remembering only the good times makes it seem in our minds.

But still, it still just seems as if all but almost everything is nothing at all of even what it used to be. Rather life just feels strangely empty despite its filling still constantly with all of these so many things that so many others seem to both be happy to have and yet not happy for long as it seems more often than not that most are just not happy at all.

And again, happiness isn’t the goal that we all seem so willing to go out of our way into going out of our minds trying so desperately to find as is anymore mostly only hidden behind such extremes as self-righteousness and social pressure and public praise and personal abuse as is borne inside the many things we do or lower ourselves to use trying to find a high in which we can feel alive in life again.

But friends, isn’t that kind of the point?

Does not all that we do, all that we use, all that we don’t or won’t or just don’t seem to really care to, doesn’t it all point to the problem being that we’re sinking inside what is a world living so wide that we’ve inside every single day so many things that offer to help us feel whole or know peace or find truth or live life that haven’t actually any interest in doing any of the above for more than a moment at most?

Indeed, life as we’ve come to live it is so utterly reliant upon so many substances and our assumptions of their helping up until the time in which we’ve become of the mind that they’re needed. And thus we’re ourselves daily leant upon the content of the current to keep our heads above the current sweeping our feet out from under us. Truly, it’s as if we can’t stand anymore, probably because we simply don’t stand for anything other than a way of life being lived not merely in but wholly of what is a world that stands for nothing at all anymore.

For truly, all that is in this world and thus insisted to form everything from every popular opinion to every then common pursuit, it’s all suits and ties and time that flies and planes that try and people who don’t because we just don’t need to anymore thanks to our having apparently arrived at the very pinnacle of life in which we have impressive careers and rolex watches and so many different travel options that we can just keep moving and moving and moving and getting nowhere at all.

All because the only places we go are further into whatever it is that we already know.

And thus we’ll never know what it is to say no to our lazy hearts asking us always back to where, what, who we’ve already been in what was then perhaps a life that felt full, but has yet become one only strangely numb as it tries so hard to hide the tears we cry because of what all has become of life.

For I don’t think that this is what any of us had in mind!

After all, who wanted peace to become so hard to find? Who dreamed of having love become something found both so often and thus then never at all? Who imagined that we’d reach a place in which all we could fathom was how to further our escape from one another into a world in which we have virtual friends, virtual romance, virtually then no chance of ever being normal again?

What is normal these days?

Well, it seems that normal is being busy. Normal is being tired. Normal is drinking coffee and energy drinks trying to stay wired so that we can keep on working on perfecting whatever it is that we feel the need to keep on trying in our hunt to find whatever it is that we can barely hope is worth the worry, not because we’d rather hope it isn’t but simply because we can barely hope at all anymore.

Because hope seems to have kind of picked up this really bad habit of letting us down.

Why?

Because our every hope is anymore only for something worldly. It’s for promotions at work and big pay raises. It’s for deluxe apartments in the sky and quiet next-door neighbors. It’s for lavish vacations and the funds to make them happen as soon as possible, because we slowly start to hate the jobs we have and need a break from them before we break down. It’s for medication we can take to keep us calm and help us sleep, where we normally only fail to dream because our minds stay awake racing through all the things we need to do or shouldn’t have said.

Again, it all just continues to fall all but dead.

And what hurts most of all is that it’s all our fault!

And yet we seem the last ones we’re willing to look to for either a reason why or something that we could, should perhaps maybe try trying to find some way to stop the crash that’s either already coming or came years ago.

Truth is we just don’t know as again it all just seems the same as it’s been for as long as we can remember in what are lives in which it seems that not many of us remember what it’s like to be alive.

Because the reality is that this ain’t it. Don’t know what all happened and most definitely don’t know why. But friends, the simple fact is that in all our trying to hold it all together and in this assumption of our having said ability continue to assume that we’d find only those things that could prove us happy and find us whole and lead us home, all we seem to have found is just ourselves in a hole in which all that we know is all that we like and yet somehow life itself comes and goes as we’re happy with it one day and over it by the next.

Probably because what life here has become is this nonstop progression at first to but then always through whatever delight or delusion we might have found ourselves believing might finally be best for us. All while we arguably leave our personal best then further behind in our always still trying to find something better in exchange for only whatever feels usually worse.

Pretty sure we’re doing something wrong.

Because, again, pretty sure we shouldn’t be this far gone if we were truly capable of knowing what we’re doing as we so often tout ourselves as assuming.

No, as it turns out all that our every assumption can do is make a fool out of both me and you and you and me and the guy down the street and the weird lady next door with way too many cats and a tendency to snore. Life has become a bore in all our trying to become what it seems is always nothing more than whatever it is that we’ve come to become since our having become convinced that the best was up ahead but only inside our head.

Friends, how can we know what’s best when daily life continues to prove that we’ve even left better behind?

For the truth is that life as it is, it’s not better than it used to be. And sure, what used to be may not have been the best either. But happiness wasn’t so hard to find. We weren’t afraid to talk to one another, worried always about offending someone. We didn’t spend so much time alone staring at phones and thus living a life through a tiny device that we literally use to talk technologically with those perhaps physically right beside us. Didn’t use to have the constant threat of so much violence.

Rather we had friends that we played with. We had families that we ate with. We had hobbies that we were enjoyable, jokes that weren’t filthy, music that we could sing along with without having to worry about how it made us feel as it wasn’t all about drugs and fornication. Sure, some of it was, but even that wasn’t nearly as graphic as some of this new stuff. We had movies our families could watch without worrying about our kids seeing something they shouldn’t. We had kids that we wanted to be with and encourage rather than just seek to live vicariously through.

Indeed, we had it often scheduled to make memories rather than all these reminders to check our schedules first.

Why have we traded all the above for their clearly inferior replacements?

Because this world’s reached the basement and, rather than stopping and trying to figure out why or how it’s all become so wrong and feels so off, no, no instead we just keep digging seeking for a deeper darkness in which to find our happiness.

Yes, the dark of delight and deception has become our direction and destination.

And yet we wonder why we feel so unhappy so much of the time!

Could it be that all we care to be, to see, to have or hold is only everything worldly? Could it be that we’ve been racing not away from but rather alongside a world going further blind either staring at screens or doing the things that prove we can’t see where we’re going nor who we’re becoming along the way? Could it be that we just don’t care anymore? About where we’re going. About who we’re becoming. About what life has become thanks to who we’ve become because of where we’ve sought to stop trying rather than fight to keep finding?

Indeed, we don’t fight for anything anymore, just against one another. Why? Because that’s what the world wants us to do. The rulers of this place want for our divisions, our indifference, our distance as gone in search of some way to ignore the implosion. Yes, our adversary prowls still seeking whomever else, whatever else he might devour via lies and distractions and this general loss of traction that we’ve chosen to for some reason delight in.

Mostly only because we’ve all apparently already arrived at some perfected version of life despite everything from music to movies to our very own motives growing only darker and more depraved by the day.

But sure, let’s pull off and call it all good enough.

Not because it is but simply because we can’t be bothered to be bothered by what we’ve become and what all it’s done to life itself.

For we have phones we can reach for that will make it all better as we scroll through pretty pictures and bright, exciting colors that stream only through those devices held inside what seems a world gone increasingly gray.

Why do we continue to settle for this way in which all but all of everything is just crumbling? What’s to prove so amazing by a life lived amassing followers and having no friends? What’s to come a life lived dumb to true hope, real peace, both of which we exchange daily for things we simply don’t need? Is having more money in the bank truly worth whatever it is that you’re doing to get it? Do our families need bigger houses or just more love to fill the ones we already have? Do we need more stuff or just an appreciation for what we’ve been given?

Do we need to keep giving all but every day to doing only all the things that this world tells us should be as common as they’ve become?

Should we all be so quick as we’ve become to just blindly accept whatever the world has chosen to be?

Can we not yet see that whatever we’re living isn’t real life? Because the fact is, as said here, all that we’ve made of all that’s here is not from He who created us to be His and, in this, thankful for what He gives. Far too thankful to have let it become whatever this is that it’s become after all.

No, He planted us in a Garden. We rather uprooted ourselves and grafted our souls into this soil of selfishness and vanity and greed and a gluttony so gluttonous that there’s just no talking to us as we’re rapidly approaching a mindset and way of life that is nothing short of rabid.

And for some reason it seems as if most here like it.

Not really sure why but it probably has something to do with how easy it is to find it. And indeed, it has been easy to find whatever this is that everything seems to have become. All we had to do was quit, give up, walk away from working away at trying to prove our past dreams as anything but the fading ideas they’ve since become. Yeah, we just had to become numb in what is a version of life that doesn’t seek to even feel alive anymore.

Because, honestly, I don’t think we could say any of us really do all that often.

For anger isn’t life. Argument isn’t life. Animosity isn’t life. Jealousy isn’t life. Comparison isn’t life. Consumerism isn’t life. Competition isn’t life. Capitalism, communism and other such political consideration isn’t life. Protests aren’t life. Viral posts aren’t life. Virtual reality definitely isn’t life. Artificial intelligence is now inspiring us to only further give up on living a life.

And yet we love it all! We soak it up. We’ve become so engrained, so engorged upon the substance of such stuff that we seek for nothing else anymore.

Because everything else is harder to find.

Because everything else is nothing that most are looking for.

And, well, it takes a freak to break away from the world and do something different, want something else, walk away from all that everyone else is running toward and not give a single care as to what anyone may think because, well, it just don’t matter. In fact it has never mattered what another may think of us. And yet anymore we’re consumed with this compulsion to post everything we’re doing on social media that we can’t seem to imagine even eating a meal without the hopes of someone else liking the photo of it first!

Is that life?

Or have we just finally lost our minds?

Friends, I don’t know what we set out to find back when we were kids but it’s nothing of what kids today are having to grow up in. I feel bad for kids today because most of them will only know a life lived with a cell phone, a laptop, a streaming service that offers them the opportunity to watch whatever they want whenever they want. And sure, those things sound pretty cool.

But are they?

Or are they only keeping us from living what could be a pretty cool life?

And no, I’m not saying that life here has to be fun or cool or whatever other words we might happen to use as synonyms for those things which cause us to feel happy and know something or peace. In fact, life in this place is supposed to be the closest to hell we ever care to get. Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble.

I just can’t find any way to possibly spin that in such a way that can make it seem like He meant that we’d have trouble trying to let go of what we’ve become and come away from it in search for something better.

Rather, I think He meant the opposite. As in that He is supposed to be our happiness, our joy, our peace, our purpose.

Not all this other stuff that we’ve settled for that, honestly, isn’t even as good as what we once had.

Because life here isn’t getting better, but even so, the best can still be yet to come. Not here obviously! But rather in that hope of here not being our home. Yet friends, that’s a hope we can only know when all that is here isn’t anything we care to take part in anymore.

So let us pack our bags and be on our way. And no, not with things we pick up along the way but rather a willingness to only lose more of what’s here as we go.

Where?

To wherever life went because, well, this just ain’t it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold