7 - 7 - 17 Blessed if You Do, Blessed if You Don't...


I think sometimes we need to step back and be thankful for the problems we have.

First, this requires an acknowledgment of the fact that we’ll always have an issue. We, with our optimizing, problem-solving brains will always find some facet of our life that could be improved in some way, so let’s not be too hasty to solve our problems in thinking that then we will finally be happy and our life will be perfect. This is not exactly the same but it is a similar concept as the hedonistic treadmill.

Second is to assess what kind of problems we are facing, what are our dilemmas. The problem I’m thinking of today is a decision. It is a decision between two good things, whether to continue with football or go in for daily mass, bodybuilding, music, and rugby with the time I would have spent on football. No doubt the decision has given me considerable distress, but I find solace when I remember what I am choosing between. Something that will make me happy and enrich my life, and something that will make me happy and enrich my life. There may be a better option but there is no bad option. It’s sort of like ordering food at a good restaurant.

So if instead of focusing on the discord it’s causing in me to make the decision I instead take a moment to be grateful to have the opportunity to pursue either I feel much more at peace.

Now there is the decision between a good thing and a bad thing. That would seem to be easy but it’s often not. It is easy in the knowing but hard in the doing for the good thing is often the painful thing and the bad thing is often much more pleasurable. I find it simultaneously encouraging and irritating how many of our “moral” issues are really motivational issues. The enormous improvement we could see in the world simply via the appliance of more grit to our personal problems sits like an untapped wilderness of vitality and happiness.

When I say “moral” issues I mean things which people confess ignorance of, when they really do know the answers, to attempt to release themselves from some degree of blame. There are real moral issues where we do not know the answer, but there are also reams of paper written everyday as justifications for why we are not obliged to do what we know we are obliged to do.

The decision between a bad thing and a bad alternative is one I’ve rarely had to face as I’ve led somewhat of a charmed life so I may not know much, not that I know exceedingly much about anything. But I think these times are when we can adopt the kind of good humor that comes with having faith in our ultimate destiny being in God’s hands. When we come to a situation where it seems we are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t, let’s remember we’re saved if we do, and saved if we don’t.

The ability to not take life too seriously is a critical one in the pursuit of happiness. If we cannot let temporal things slide like water off a duck’s back we won’t be able to fly to our ultimate destination and state of being, as a waterlogged duck wouldn’t be.
(Apologies for that metaphor)

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