enjoy your stupid life.
hEy mEdIUm,
Up until a while ago, I used to think my life was stupid. It still kind of is maybe.
Reading self improvement books aren’t all that either, until you’ve fixed your core, so I found it pretty pointless too.
I’m sure a majority of you think that your life is stupid. You have no friends, family, partner, hopes, dreams, achievements, goals, direction, legacy, you know? The works. Clearly having all this means you have a very FULL life.
Heck, I agree. That’s the case with me too.
Until 2 months ago, my life was so stupid. No real friends, the ones I did have I’ve fallen out with and the others, I just couldn’t bother faking to fit in anymore.
Finding a partner who follows Christ is so hard, I ended things with the last one when I got closer to Him, because, priorities.
Hopes? Pffft. I’ve always hoped to be a doctor, and when I sucked at chem in 10th grade because of a dysfunctional family, I was nudged to take commerce as my ‘life-line’ (big mistake.)
I’ve messed up so many times and been unhealthy, and tormented with occasional, but brutal infections that my large dreams had watered down to just wanting to live a healthy life.
Achievements? Heh, getting 1st place in a class spelling bee competition for 9 years straight, That’s my proudest achievement.
Goals? Stay alive?
Direction? I’m 21, I didn’t think I’d make it this far.
Legacy huh. Let’s find out. Maybe along the way i give you a different perspective??
My life was stupid until 2 months ago.
“That was 2 months ago. So, what’s changed, Ezra?”
Nothing much and everything at the same time.
Quick tangent:
Yesterday for some reason, my YouTube algorithm kept recommending me videos of people who were terminally ill. They all said their goodbyes and thanks and for some reason they had this glint in their eye. The kind that shows life, when surely, they must be in pain. But they had this glint, the kind of glint that showed me that even in dying, they did something else. They lived.
So, I get to this one girl, Claire Wineland. She was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis; it is pretty serious.
She goes onto, not cursing her health, instead lives her fullest life, and what’s more? She helped others by starting a foundation, giving TEDx talks, helping people, but also, decorating her room, loving her parents and getting to the next day. She passed away in 2018, at the age of 21 she lived faster than all of us. She inspired many, the sick, the lazy, all of them.
This is funny to me, because she lived until the age of 21. Truly, lived.
I turned 21 last week, and while I still have my own little (major) issues, I just began living. That life which was choking me away, I realized was losing its chokehold on me, and I thank the King for that.
But more importantly, we’ve been looking at life all wrong, in the quest for passion and that one meaning you want to give your life, you stray from truly living.
See, most of us are living a life of death. Death festered by the principalities of evil, a dragon of death if you may.
Personal example.
A chunk of my sorrow came from me shutting myself out. It became so bad, I’d personify him as another individual entirely.
I hated him, for feeling, for being sensitive, for not being strong enough. I was ashamed I couldn’t help him. Embarrassed that I was powerless to him.
Or so I thought, when I turned back to see him, I just saw me but unlike me. Oh, this one was something vile, malicious, turns out that’s who I had to eliminate, so I did what I could do best, understand His word and eliminate that filth.
“So, if I needed to kill, what did I need? A sword, duh.”
So, I pray for the sword of the spirit. You know? To impale it clean right? but I don’t get it. Instead, I saw myself becoming kinder, washing that filth off of him but I never got dirty. It’s almost like I understood that to help the world, the people, that one neighbor, you have to be kind, which is the sword of the spirit. A sword that saves the heart and kills evil, to kill evil is to be kind. It worked.
That probably is the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Not some cool sword that kills everything in sight. Rather, the word that kindly, forgives us, but at the same time, condemns the evil within.
“Hate the sin, love the sinner.” Type beat.
Continuing, I began talking to him more and more, really listening. I didn’t want to become a doctor, I just wanted to help people and see them smile, the need to become a doctor came from that one time as a child a doctor helped me out when I was sick, when I felt like shit, he made jokes and spoke to me like an individual, giving me the recognition of my own individuality. Now, I know it’s their code of treating patients that way, but living my life, I wish I got more of that, maybe wouldn’t have led to me, being who I am right now. Then I realize, I can do that without being a doctor.
We would HAVE to be kind to love, don’t we? Can we love the very ones we hate, knowing they too are made in His image, pretty hard right? But that’s the neat trick.
Not our kindness, but His.
We must be inspired, by what Jesus did, Ruling by serving, He walked His teachings and died with said teaching, and rose from the dead, truly living in righteous design. He can to show us the Way, to be THE WAY, to live.
Maybe that’s why the truth is Him, love really saves huh.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s wrong types of love, but His true, sacrificial love, goes beyond just heroically dying for a friend, no, it is also the little things, that cultivate love, its willing to sweat to help someone up, to ask a third time if someone is okay, it’s to offer someone a coffee so you have an opportunity to get to know someone, it’s to go against the crowd and be truly you, the ‘you’ that is kind and keen to help. To serve. The way you were designed to.
Living is simple. Living is hard.
We overcomplicate things too much and then turn to procrastinating, at least I do, and then we go on to justify our lack of initiative as inherent incompetence, when it truly isn’t the case.
2 months ago, I just had this epiphany upon epiphany streak and I grew in the word of God. My perception on living and finding meaning was, in a word, revolutionized.
According to the Truth, the world we live in right now is because we thought we knew better, so simply put, the best way to live? Is in following His design of us, and to follow Him, Jesus gave a tutorial in living the way God deemed necessary.
“So, what does it truly mean to live in His way, eh?”
Good question. Simple answer really, but hard, since I myself don’t know all of it.
I think, it’s to enjoy a coffee and look at the blue sky. It’s to enjoy a conversation with a friend. It’s to click not one, but a bunch of photos with your friends, and keep the goofy, ‘ugly’ ones.
It’s not getting so caught up in the dream that makes failure a fatality. Rather, it’s having goals to become a hard worker. To be able to toil and reap the benefits by becoming a hard worker, the result is a bonus. To be kind His way even if it means you’re going to be mocked, He was too. To search for the truth and live by the truth.
Most of all it’s to realize that being you is who you were created to be, so don’t bother hiding it, you’re hurting yourself.
I’ve a question to you with multiple personae, who has facades built up on your personality.
“Are your friends, truly, YOUR friends? If you were to be your honest self, would you be a stranger to them?”
If so, you know what to do now.
When others enjoy partying and you like looking at the sky, go for it. When others hurt someone and you want to help? Go for it, you don’t have to sound helpful either, sassy is fine, just do it the way you’d like to do. Be unapologetically kind.
Most of all, talk to God, and hear from Him. After that, to examine yourself, talk to you.
It is baffling how we run away from ourselves. We need to kill our evil, with His love, we can’t do it alone.
Phew. (totally not a longer read cuz I haven’t been habitual, definitely not.) Have a great week ahead.
Bye.
