Peaceful Happiness

I am so unsatisfied.  I don’t know what it is, but I feel restless.  There is a yearning in my heart for something more, for something real.  I am disgusted by the life I live.  A life surrounded by riches.  A life where I have everything I need and more.  A life where I drive by starving people in a car that cost more money than they’ll ever see.  I face this reality every waking moment.  From the house I live in to the car I drive to the clothes I wear even to the food I eat, it’s all too expensive.  And yet, I’m stuck in the mindset that I deserve this, that this is what I’m supposed to have.  And so I buy more, and I boast about what I have, and I pretend that it’s all good, and that all of this is what makes me happy.  When in all reality, my life is ripping open at the seams.  It’s coming undone stitch by stitch.  The looks in the faces of those around me, hidden beneath what t me seem like fake smiles, show pain and fear.  That with one wrong turn, everything will come crashing down.  This empire built on ashes, isn’t made to stand much longer.  The foundation is shifting ever so slightly each day.  Soon, it will crumble.  Maybe then, when I have nothing, nothing at all, maybe then I will be satisfied.  I seek peaceful happiness, not a longing for more.  I pray that this thirst for a life with purpose, will one day be quenched.  I pray that that day comes soon, because I don’t know how much longer I can take of lips stretched thin, of eyes looking away, of hearts ignoring the pain.  I don’t know how many more nights I can last, through tears falling silently, unnoticed.  I want to scream, but I can’t find the courage to face the aftermath.  For I know, once the earthquake shakes the world around as, there will still be the small quakes that follow.  The worst will be over, but the fear that it might happen again, will burn in our minds and in our very beings, ruining us forever.  And that is not peace.  But what then?  If I cannot scream, or even say how I feel, but if I must sit here quietly, and pretend that everything is okay, then how will I ever be satisfied?  When will I truly have the courage to get up and walk away?  When will I do what I want to do, be who I want to be, and go where I want to go?  I have to stop relying on the very things that surround me, that suck the life out of me.  I must become reliant on the One, and Him only.  But how?  How do I give up everything around me, the possessions that I cling to ever so dearly?  And will that make me truly satisfied?  Or will I end up with nothing, sitting on the street next to the man who hans’t showered in weeks and his last meal came out of a dumpster.  Maybe that’s where I need to be though.  Perhaps,  the very longing inside of me, is a longing to become nothing.  To be unknown, to do unknown things, to live an unknown life.  If I sit next to the hungry father, or the motherless child, or homeless son, then I might be satisfied.  If I too am hungry, and motherless, and homeless, then maybe I will be content, maybe those people, the ones we feel so sorry for, are the ones that actually know what peaceful happiness really is.  What if, when we drive by them in our cars feeling sorry for them, they feel sorry for us?  Because even though it looks like they have nothing, they really have everything.  Maybe, just maybe, they are satisfied.  And so, if I too become like them, then perhaps I will know true joy.  The joy and satisfaction of being the lowest.  There is great beauty in walking the same path that my Jesus walked.  And if I could no longer just talk about it, or read about, or imagine what it’s like, but if I actually walk it, the road littered with trash, then maybe I will be satisfied.  If I learn the stories and the pain of those who are living on the side of this dirty path, if I take the time to love them, if I become one of them, then perhaps I will no longer be unfulfilled, unsatisfied, and longing for more, but maybe I will have everything, and I will know what peaceful happiness truly is.