Saturday, September 3, 2011

On the Coexistence of Awesome and Suck

(With both "awesome" and "suck" being nouns in this context.)

So often we tend to think of "my life is good" and "this is the dregs of my coffee cup of life right now" to be a dichotomy—two states of being that are diametrically opposed.  You're either in mostly good circumstances or you're in mostly bad circumstances.  Or at least I often think that way, probably because a lot of artists tend to juxtapose them in popular worship songs.  But I've been thinking today—there are some circumstances in my life right now which are definitely adding to World Suck, in both minor and major ways.  But there are also ways in which God just keeps showing up, proving that He's good, loving, faithful, a good listener, sovereign…yes, all the time.  For example, my home life is on a roller coaster with a very high nausea rating right now, but I'm getting two years of free college tuition.…I'm stressed beyond reason about these intermediate French classes I have to take, but I've suddenly started sleeping better than I have all year.… I might not have any idea how I'm going to finish a novel by the end of the year, but I'm no longer catatonically depressed about it.…Facing the labyrinth of choices I'm going to have to make in the next two-ish years literally makes me sick to my stomach, but I'm getting it really hammered into my head for the first time that I can trust my friends to love me even if I'm not perfect.  My life has nadirs and zeniths dwelling side by side, and it always will (if not to this degree all the time).
…Yes, my second thought after all this was, "Well, duh."  But I think we can tend to dwell on one or the other most of the time, so it's nice to have it out of my blind spot for a few hours.

I tend to be an optimist in the short term and a pessimist in the long term (e.g., I think human culture as a whole is undergoing steady entropy, but I tend to be hopeful and "look on the bright side" regarding things that happen in my life and the lives of people I know).  Comes with the Christianity, I suppose. (Fallen world / sovereign God.  Also not really a dichotomy.)

…I have no succinct or revelatory ending for this post.  That's pretty much all I have to say.

2 comments:

  1. For the record, if you were perfect, I probably *wouldn't* like you.

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  2. Hehe, yeah; being perfect would actually be really awkward. I think that I tend to focus on the positive aspects of my close friends, which weirdly leads me to also focus on my own negative characteristics/habits/what-have-you. So I tend to feel like I'm not good enough to be people's friend, or I feel second-rate, for no good reason. So what I meant was, I'm (…finally…) really starting to get over that weird mentality.

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