Thoughts 1.5.22

I wrote this to the song: The Funeral (Band of Horses) and would recommend listening while reading!

The work is never finished. The box remains unchecked. We never arrive. It doesn’t matter how many times you achieve the goal, reach the milestone or get to the top. There is always another goal, another finish line and another mountain top to summit. But especially in the modern west I think we have become intrinsically conditioned to the dopamine hit of achievement. We have become addicted to our own supply. It is such a paradoxical way of living we have become comfortable with as normal. The more we achieve the more we want to achieve. When I first began wrestling with this condition of our existence I swung the mental pendulum all the way to the side of rejecting achievement, of pushing back against the ladder climbing and goal setting and flagrant ambition. But as I learned and prayed and looked at the fruit in the lives of those people I looked my nose down upon, I came to the sobering realization that maybe the lack of ambition found in the hypocritical world of the “enlightened” (myself included) is a justification for lazy existence. I used to think that my rejection of ambition was a holy endeavor, a revolt against the constructs of modern living… modern Christianity. According to Augustine, “the opposite of ambition is not humility, it is sloth, passivity, timidity, and complacency.” It was God himself who I believe set the framework for our bi-coupled state of being. He saved the world, yet the redemption is incomplete. Fullness of joy and wholeness of life is secured in the perfect sacrifice and gift found in Him. Yet the world remains broken, and human will is a free will, and human free will has a damning proclivity towards sin. Yet, creator God in all his infinite wisdom chose to for in this moment of all eternity, to keep the work unfinished. I believe this to be on purpose. We are invited into the task. We are given the desire to achieve and compete to “spur one another on” and pursue a holy ambition. We are passionate, dangerous, and strong beings. My prayer for myself and my prayer for anyone else is to lean into these cosmic attributes found deep within. But allow them to spur yourself and others on into the work of the good. Into the work of creating, of building, of generous existence and full living. Don’t achieve for the sake of the fleeting self, achieve for others. For it is in the service of others, the creating of beauty, and the building of a better world, we may find the meaning of a life well lived.