Three Things

The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

It was by chance that I came upon such a profound insight from this renowned philosopher, and seldom have I ever related to a single citation as much as I do that of Bertrand Russell. Over the course of past weeks, I have continuously searched my heart in hopes of finding who I truly am and what my role will be within this complicated and ever-changing world; thus, with such an endeavor, many portals to hidden thoughts were opened and subjected to scrutiny and evaluation, much as a specimen beneath a microscope. However, this time I was both the specimen and the scientist – lost within a self-evaluation.

I have always sought love and affection – some outward display that would guarantee me the peace of knowing I was worthwhile. This love manifested itself not only in familial bonds, but in friendships and relationships. Along the quest to discover and attain such devotion, I sacrificed parts of myself, portions of my identity, in order to conform to the desired model of the one whose love I sought. Like in a masquerade, I moved as a marionette, morphing into various roles I had refined since high school. In the process, I forgot who I was and assumed that the role I took on at the moment was my very definition. I wanted to be loved – that type of love one sees in painted fairytales . . . the type of love that never ends and never waivers. In my mind, this love, despite disappointments and failures on my own part, would always grow and nurture my body and soul. Though I had the love of family and the devotion of friends, I still found myself eagerly awaiting more. It was as if a part of me was empty and angrily desired contentment, and so, I searched until I thought I found the type of love that would appease it. For a lengthy span of time, I believed, or so desperately wanted to believe, that the supposed love I found in the eyes of a boy was enough to satisfy my hunger. I became so lost within the illusion of romantic love that the mind convinced my heart that this was enough, but still my soul longed for more. It was in the blazing whirlwind of love’s failure that the very thing I sought so fervently for, Love, found me – broken upon the floor and pitifully mourning a heart’s shattering. It was in that time of never-ending tears that the word "agape" formed in the words of every friend and the smile of every stranger – and it was the word strewn across every page of Scripture that I never truly understood until it at long last chose to reveal itself to me. "God is Love" . . . why did I never embrace this meaning? Why did I seek love everywhere but the One that IS the very thing I yearned for above all else? I sought love within those who fail and allow love to die like a withering flower on a parched day – achingly slowly and without warning. Unfailing love, agape . . . it was always right there. I neither needed to assume a particular image or character, achieve a special rank, or appear the most beautiful to receive it . . . it was in being hideously shattered that Love found me. Isaiah 64:8 says, "Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." And Romans 12:2 commands, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." It was on my knees, head bowed in a weary reverence, that His words echoed within my heart . . . I had attempted to alter every flaw to fit the mold of others. I tried so hard to become a perfect person, but for my own sake. I wanted to be good enough so that those around me would never leave and would never cease to love me. Why did it take until now to see that all I sought, all I wanted and cried for, was already there? He was right there . . . I did not need to dance before him as a pretty little puppet aching to please an audience, fearing rejection and shame. I could come as I am - tired and dirty and helpless. There is a song that communicates this very particular truth – I am nothing but dirt before the Lord, yet it is through ’broken’ dirt that flowers arise. I had never been so beautifully broken. And in those moments of divine enlightenment, I at long last felt the satisfying, merciful love of the very One that is Love . . . the very one that shapes this body of clay into a figure pleasing to Him, and not to the stage that is the world.

I imagine if one was to ask those from my high school years what word could describe me, it would be something related to matters of intelligence. Knowledge has been my mind’s desire as much as food and water are the desires of the body. Since I was a child, I was fascinated with the motions of the world – the coming and going of the day, the fluctuation of the wind, the rise and fall of the tides, and flutter of butterfly wings on a spring day. I wondered what turned the skies ablaze and what principles governed the expanse of space. As I grew, I sought to know the human mind and heart – what caused a man to hate and what caused a man to fear. Freud, Adler, Jung, Erikson . . . all consumed my thoughts with a fiery passion. The laws of nature and of science, of mathematics and grammar, of the Earth’s histories and future fate, the context and interpretations of Scripture, the symbols and figurative language of the Wisdom Books, the very mind of God . . . I want to know it all, yet so little has my mind retained and understood. The quest for knowledge is both a gift from the Lord, and a potential curse, for knowledge can blind should it not be controlled. Every factor of the human psyche is like a beast needing to be tamed in order to be used. It is a fine discipline. This thirst for knowledge has only but begun to be filled, drop by drop as in an hourglass. It is a quest that never truly ceases.

Love and knowledge – these attributes have allowed me to momentarily taste a bit of heavenly wonder and awe, to ascend beyond the span of reality and see into the spiritual realm of the worlds, and briefly fade away from the material world. Yet, as I escaped and floated away within my mind, a faint cry always caught my attention. It began as a whimper, and as I would turn toward it, the whimpers accumulated into a mass of wailings and sobbing moans, and my eyes once so focused upon the fiery skies would look upon the earth and perceive the sorrows of the world. What words can describe the frailty and wretched nature of mankind? Their faces have haunted my soul for so long – the children barely clothed in flesh, the men baring guns and sickeningly thirsty grins, the babies lost within famine, the women clinging to the bodies of murdered children, the elderly covered in disease and parasites, the youth forced into slavery, the young girls whose screams of rape are silenced by monetary gags . . . As I watch their faces flash before my eyes in a morbid slideshow, I hear a scream rise in a shrill tone of anguish. I search for it, begging it to cease, but it is only upon passing a mirror that I realized that it is I who is making such a horrid cry. And I fall upon the floor and allow the sobs the tear through my body, soaking the ground in tears, as I claw at it in hope of gaining relief. Yes . . . pity has always brought me back down. Oh . . . how I want to relieve their pain. And I beg the Lord again and again . . . please, I will take it for them all. Give it to me – My God, I can take it. I close my eyes each night and see their faces. I hear their moaning. The whole Earth is shuddering in aguish and helpless sorrow. I walk down the street and see the homeless man, weary and dirty, beside the road. None see him. They turn away – afraid, so afraid to touch and feel. But his eyes pierce into my heart, and I hear his cry for help and for hope. Invisible . . . but not to me. I see them and their faces never leave me. I carry them and they become a part of me, and with each face my soul cracks until I buckle in despair. I long to alleviate the poverty, disease, hate, loneliness, and vileness that plagues the Earth in a pestilence not even the most genius of authors, painters, or directors could imagine, but . . . I cannot. And, I too suffer. Their lives fall to dust within my hands, and it is as if I am left lonely upon a floor of rising sand – like an hourglass that never fills. But, despite it all, I still believe in the existence of good amidst evil. It is hopeless, they tell me. It is inevitable, they tell me. It is deserved, they tell me. You are one person, they tell me. Why, they question of me.

Well . . . because I’m a dreamer. I see the world not only as it is, but as it could very well be. After all, darkness can only last until the morning . . .

This has been my life. I have found it worth living . . .