Surviving The Fall, 56

We never get what we want, nor what we feel entitled to. Such is life. And should our lives take a direction not necessarily of our families' and peers approval? So much the worse. I was not upwardly mobile, for example, and therefore I have been shunned by my family. I don't have a car, I don't own my home, and I don't have stock options for my retirement. They are too embarrassed by my humble arrangements to even acknowledge that I exist. Am I sad about this? Not in the least. I feel liberated from the judgement of some very selfish, shallow and odious people and I am only proud to be disassociated from such a loathsome tribe. I am grateful that I am alone. And I am grateful that there are people in my life who share some of my most cherished values. No regrets here that none of them are blood relations. I believe strongly in gratitude. But gratitude with a person in the equation. I don't mean just a vague nice and warm and fuzzy feeling of twee that is offered to the Universe for all the nice things in our lives. I mean directing our gaze and attention to God. A personal, Creator-God, who actually is and does exist, and who fills and inhabits every single facet of our lives, our planet, and this universe. The hardest pill for nonbelievers to swallow is that they might be somehow complicit in their denial or nonregard of the Divine. Don't thank the universe. Thank God, who created, who gave birth to, and fills and sustains this universe. Even if you say you don't believe in him, you actually know that he is, that he exists and that he is awaiting a response in your heart no matter how much you turn from him. Still not biting? I don't expect you to. But I am concerned about the trouble some of you might be putting yourselves through with all your efforts and contortions that you twist your lives into in order to avoid and deny this most essential truth. I am not telling you to become a Christian, or Muslim, Jew, or Zoroastrian or whatever. Simply that you stop resisting this most irresistible force of love that occupies every corner and particle of the universe, except for one little place: your personal, individual will. God will not step there. He will only have from each one of us a voluntary and loving response to his love, otherwise this is not a relationship of love, but of compulsion. So, if this is something you don't want to do, don't feel you are able to do, don't feel quite ready to do, Gentle Reader, then by no means are you expected to. But now you know where we stand. So then, gratitude. To God. Acknowledging that I am not the centre of the universe and that it isn't all about me, and that I could be grateful simply for one beautiful and marvelous thing: this gift of life. Life, Gentle Reader, is a gift. We did not will ourselves into being, and not even our parents did this for us. Likely, while they were in the middle of making whoopee, you and I were probably among the furthest things from their endorphin-flooded brains while they were doing just what we get all squeamish about imagining our dads and moms doing with each other. Especially when we owe our existence to this bargain. But not even their act of coitus made you and I a certainty, but whatever concurrence of events in their bodies that assured that another human being should be born into this world, and this concurrence of events I call the work and will of the divine. So life is a gift, and we are all gifts to one another? To the planet? The universe? Oh! That it were true, Gentle Reader! Oh, that it were true! Now, I have life. We have life. I have existence. We have existence? We are part of this beautiful, intricate web of life, and regardless of whether or not we have realized, or never will realize our dreams and ambitions, we are still all here together, and we all have something, our very selves, lives and souls to contribute. And whether you choose to believe or not in the Higher Power, perhaps simply give thanks to that which you cannot name and open our eyes to this hidden vision of heaven that ever shines before us, though often hidden and obscured in the darkest nights of our souls.