There is no real sense in which you are "owed" any pleasure, great or small, and it is a very dangerous line of thinking to believe (or even entertain the thought) that you are. Also, it is very common. Much in modern life causes agony, and a lot of conventional wisdom would have us believe that if something bad happens to us, we must drown ourselves in pleasures to distract/overcome that thing. We all know that doesn't work.
Still, maybe we cling to the thought that, if there is a scoresheet of pains and pleasures, if we experience a great pain in our life, we ought to have a little pleasure here and there--maybe even a big pleasure, maybe even something that we reorient our lives to get. This thought is illusory. In fact, true happiness is based on living our lives on the basis of the good and the real--and not on the basis of what brings us pleasure.
The thing to do when we experience a sorrow that overclouds our life is to stay on course. Stay steady and trust in a Mercy that provides for you way more than your (largely futile) search for this or that pleasure will yield. Open yourself to what suffering can teach, because realizing that living a good life will sometimes naturally (and not as a result of mistakes or sin on your part but just because you are trying to be good and seek the good) cause you to suffer can really make you think. Is pleasure really what life is about when it passes away and your soul does not?
No comments:
Post a Comment