I think we all have that one “I only need … and my life will be complete” friend. Funny enough if you stick around long enough you will hear the blank filled in with anything and everything.A girlfriend to a job to a car to a drink to a jacket to a new Drake album. One day I was on the phone with my “I only need this” friend.
“The only thing I need in this life is a … and I’m set” he said
I replied “No ,you my friend need everything under the sun”
“We all need everything we just lie about it” he said back.
His comeback left me speechless for a good day or two probably because somewhere deep down I knew it was true. I knew every little thing in my life can be “the thing.”
But why though? The answer we want more. Social media, life and even the Bible is riddled with people who wanted more. Even when they got more. Happiness didn’t follow because there was always one more thing.
As we move through different stages of development different things become the center of our world. Mimicking our older siblings becomes everything at some point. By the time I hit sixteen, the most important thing was money, a cool boyfriend and good grades. Yet on the eighth of January 2013 I found myself in a hospital bed with tubes in my arm. Why? Simple. I had the grades, I had the money, I had the boyfriend but somehow I was unhappy and I tried to kill myself.
That day the why became too important to ignore. Why would someone with everything want to die? I didn’t get the answer to that question till nearly five years later. Even when I did, I somehow found myself struggling to understand it.
So, I began to read to try figure out how to have everything. Everything I read, everything I heard all led me down a path I’d rejected, for many valid yet foolish reasons. And I found myself at the door of someone I never thought I’d go to for anything. God.
I was after addition if I’m being honest. He saw that and he stripped me of everything. That night all I heard was this you has to die for the you I can walk with to strive. A lesson in itself pain is everything. It felt like labor only emotionally. I cried, I bled, I broke.
When dawn came all, he said was We build.
The problem is every little thing can have a world of importance attached to it. Nine times out of ten we get it and we discover these are just things we want not things we need. After that we jump to the next thing and the next and the next. What if we could tell the difference between want and need, the difference between a true passion and wanting to “show the world” ?
All this being considered, there is still a lot we need. It would follow that if we want the best life we should probably balance all these needs out. What exactly that balance looks like varies from person to person. For you to balance those things you have to actually know what they are. Only you and God know these things.
The most wrongly used phrase is “knowledge is power”. People only say that when you tell them you want to drop out of college. In all honesty you can’t do anything before you know how and that is knowledge. Similarly doing anything without having knowledge of the why is also pointless.
With wisdom comes understanding, not just of what to pursue , but understanding of the world , understanding the why, understanding of your true self and understanding of God. This is why Solomon asked only for wisdom. So seek out this wisdom. Introspect. Talk to God. Explore the world. Listen to people. It all helps.
Of course, this will take time and effort. Adam Silveira said “People are complicated puzzles” and like any other puzzle you will only see the whole picture at the end, which in this case is when you are on your deathbed, but having an outline to work with is always a good idea.
Even then we still do things with the knowledge that this is not the way to go or this is not what we need. We are chasing happiness. Well happiness is fleeting, No matter how hard you try something/someone will come and knock the happiness away. Being happy is a mood. If a mood was meant to be permenant it wouldn’t be defined as a state of being at a particular time.
So, what should you strive for then ? PEACE OF MIND.
There will always be more. Always.
Peace is knowing what is enough for you Peace is everything.
Everything written here was an eye opener for me
There are a lot if things I had not thought about, and this made me realize a lot
Indeed, It all starts and ends with God!! Without Him we are nothing.
Amen bro. I think you should also write going deeper on the topic peace of mind.
Great read!