FEROCIOUS STRUGGLES OF LIFE

A lot of my reading this summer has been philosophical contemplative in nature.  Various authors and thinkers have drawn me back to consideration of the age-old questions that human kind have puzzled over for millennia.  One of those is the question of fate: is the general course of our life charted out for us ahead of time?  Is the assumption that human beings ultimately exercise free will in the direction of their living really only a myth?  I can hear you now..."Pat, why do you think this matters and why are you writing about it?"

Let me explain.  A book I've just finished contains a passage by an author that goes, "Life leads us to where we should be, despite our ferocious struggles against it."  When I first read that line, I thought that was a finely crafted phrase that sums up the human experience.  On second thought, I considered the implications of that statement, essentially a negation of the role my choices and actions have in the quality of my living.  Yikes!!!  it might be a nice turn of phrase, but I don't agree with it.

I think that the elements of human life that are 'fateful' are our birth and our death; everything else in between is a combination of never-ending choices and outcomes.  I think humans were made for the 'ferocious struggle'  that is life, the constant effort for good to prevail over evil, for hope to win out when fear would take over. 

Being "made in God's image" (Genesis 1:27) has more to do with how we should live than what shape our bodies might take.  I think that to live a good life, the struggle matters - whether it is bitter or sweet; to have heaven on earth, our personal choices and actions matter.  The truth of that is evident in the world around us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

May we be awake and ready for the ferocious struggles of life.

Pat

TAKE THIS THOUGHT AWAY WITH YOU

"No one ever finds life worth living - one has to make it worth living"