Being utterly transparent, one of my greatest fears is never feeling that I’ve arrived. What I mean by “arriving” is the feeling that I have made it. It’s this idea I have in my head of coming to this place in my life where I’m absolutely content. In some religions, it’s referred to as Nirvana or enlightenment. The status of complete peace and bliss. Siddartha understood it as completely ridding yourself of any desire so you have no attachments to this world.
One of his hopes what to rid himself of suffering but he found that suffering was a result of unmet expectations. Or expectations that can not ultimately satisfy, and by removing the desire for such things you essentially untether yourself from this world and are free to achieve a state of salvation in which you are blissfully free (PBS). My basic problem with this premise is that I am human and I have desires.
I think our desires make up a big part of who we are. These things can be good or bad, but consist of our individuality. To deny oneself of our hopes and dreams would be to suppress a part of what makes us human. From a Christian perspective, God created humankind to rule over creation and to take care of it, not to escape it. That is to say, I believe we were created to fully experience all life has to offer. As a person who believes in the Bible, I don’t think we were made to experience pain and hardship originally, but because of sin, it’s now apart of our reality. Paul said, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
That being said, I don’t think we can just use bible verses to explain away human suffering or use it to suppress our desires, but we can use it to inform what we’re experiencing. The Bible informs our experience, but it doesn’t necessarily define it. This is why a relationship with God has to be a living and active thing. I don’t just read a book to get an answer. I read to inform what I’m experiencing so I can be brought closer to what it is that I am seeking.
It’s only been recently that the following Bible verses have come to mean something to me, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). For the majority of my life, decisions have either been made for me or I just stumbled into them not really knowing what I was doing. Now, for the first time, I’m finally wondering about where I am going with my life.
When I was younger, probably in the 2nd or 3rd grade, my parents took my siblings and me on a surprise vacation to Disneyland. My dad had this large 22-inch tall plastic coke bottle piggy bank where he would place any loose change he would find in it. I remember always looking for loose change to put in it because I wanted to help fill it up, while sometimes simultaneously taking money out of it when I wanted to. His goal was to fill it up to eventually pay for our family’s trip.
When it was finally full, he and my mom surprised our family by telling us we were headed to California, so we took all the change to the grocery store to cash it in and it felt like Christmas! We packed up the car for our trip and we had all sorts of food and snacks. I was excited to go because I could finally tell all my friends that I had gone to Disneyland! Looking back on my experience, Space Mountain and the Matterhorn were my favorite rides. However, my favorite part of the whole experience was honestly the road trip there.
The anticipation of arriving at the “happiest place on earth” filled me with so much excitement. I was excited that we were driving together as a family and that we got to eat our own packed food in the car. Of course, there were the questions of “are we there yet?”, but it was the journey that built up the anticipation and made it so amazing! To this day, the drive there is still my favorite part of the whole trip.
Living in the age of social media and screen phones allows us to be able to see everyone’s highlight reels. A ‘highlight reel’ is when you get to see all the exciting things that someone is doing through what they post on social media. It’s a highlight of something very exciting only you don’t get to see what all transpired before or after the trip. Sometimes this makes people jealous or it leaves little to the imagination since we can now see these various destinations scrolling just by scrolling through our phone. It was like the mystery of what Disneyland looked liked fascinated my imagination more than what I actually saw and experienced.
Therefore, what I think is more important than just arriving in our life’s journey is loving the journey, because if history has taught us anything about mankind, it is that we will never really be satisfied. There’s always more we could be doing or new things we could be buying so getting that car, promotion, longed-for marriage, or career is not as important as actually being happy with the journey.
Robert Holden, Ph.D. coined mankind’s obsession with the future and where we are headed as “Destination Addiction”. He describes this as a neurotic behavior in which people, “who suffer from Destination Addiction believe that success is a destination” (Holden). As a result, they’re never able to live in the moment because everything is building up to some form of success in the future. He further states that these people, “are addicted to the idea that the future is where success is, happiness is, and heaven is” (Holden).
One of Christianity’s biggest boasts is that Heaven is the epicenter of happiness and eternal bliss, but that leaves me asking the question, what do we do in the meantime? Jesus said it plainly in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly”. In another passage, He said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). He wasn’t speaking of joy to come in the future, but one that we can have now.
The challenge is humbling ourselves to the point of wanting what Jesus wants. When His disciples asked Him how they should pray, He said one of the things we should say to God is, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). It’s not always about what we want, but what God wants. One of my favorite Bible verses is Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart”. This is great news because we don’t stifle or suppress our desires with God. Neither do we chase a desire that only leaves us wanting more, but when we delight ourselves in the Lord then we are given what we’re truly seeking. This way we’re not just focused on arriving, but now we are thriving.
Resources:
- Making Christian Millionaires https://www.buzzsprout.com/995131/7422214-making-christian-millionaires-w-mason-aitken
Bibliography
Bible Gateway. “New King James Version.” https://www.biblegateway.com/.
Holden, Robert. “What is Destination Addiction? How to Stop Thinking about What Comes Next.” Robert Holden, Ph.D., Hay House, Inc., 2021, https://www.robertholden.com/blog/what-is-destination-addiction/#:~:text=People%20who%20suffer%20from%20Destination,happiness%20is%2C%20and%20heaven%20is.&text=Destination%20Addiction%20is%20a%20preoccupation,that%20happiness%20is%20somewhere%20else.
PBS. “Basics of Buddhism.” Arizona PBS, Arizona PBS, https://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm.
Zachary Surovec 