The V Day I allude to in the header is the film, one in which everyone ever appears in, and one which made me cry a little ( big surprise there). It also made me want to get to know this cat called Rumi a little better . . .
If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.- Rumi
I like that - "love's confusing joy". Is anything more confusing than the joy love brings? Hear me out - we get told to excel, to do our best. So far so good. But perhaps less directly if not more importantly, we are told to carve out our own little kingdoms, our own little empires. We're told to find what is ours and hang on to it for dear life. The message behind most ads (and really, the only way the ad industry continues to exist) is that I DESERVE THIS. I NEED THIS. THIS SHOULD BE MINE.
We are so fond of this thing called independence (and the ownership of stuff that accompanies it) that we have even mistakenly associated it with freedom.
I know, right? Freedom and independence NOT being one and the same? Yeah, it had me for a bit too. I think we'd all agree that no man is an island, right? That our actions are significant, have meaning, carry weight. And that those actions affect those around us, be it for better or worse. And then THEIR actions affect us and others, and so on and so forth. Well, we are so dependent on each other, and more significantly, on our Maker, for life to have any meaning at all.
Come up with something worthwhile that does not affect people. And please, if you find it, let me know. Because anything worth doing is going to affect someone other than us - there's no escaping it. And I'd go even further, and say that anything worth doing and devoting time to is going to better the lives of people around us ( and those who seek to argue that bettering the lives of flora and fauna around the planet miss my point - I'm not saying we're just dependent on people. No, we depend on everything living here.)
So in short, anything worth doing is going to stem from love.
And the things not worth doing? Well, they stem from something that is not love. I'm not sure exactly how to define it, but selfishness, greed - these come close. So living JUST for your own pleasure, living JUST for you, living JUST for that raise or promotion or self improvement or self confidence or self worth or self assurance or self love or self awareness or anything else is going to be devoid of joy.
So really, the things that seem to be so important? Trivial. Empty.
What we really want is love's confusing joy, this deep sense of everything being alright in the world that stems from living in a way that seeks to better those around us, and seeks to allow them to better us as well. It's confusing because it goes against our nature. It is joy because it is a positivity that does not depend on emotions. And it is love because it embraces the need for others and celebrates this interdependency in a non exploitative way.
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