I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I live in my own little world. In it, is the little area I travel around in, the people I connect with and the career I focus on to give me financial security and all of it makes me happy. While it's true that my world is small, it's also filled with complications, unhappy experiences and moments of pure joy.
Disclaimer, I will be talking a little about God. Now I'm not here to convince you that God exists or doesn't exist. I believe that the quest to find the truth behind God’s existence is an individual journey. At the end of the day, it's your choice. No one is holding you at gunpoint. As for me, you'd really have to know me well to know why I do believe God is real. There are too many occasions for me to think otherwise. I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist. But like I said, convincing you of God’s existence is NOT what this article is about.
Instead I want to talk about you and me. Several years ago I was driving along a road with picturesque harbour views in my home town when I suddenly decided to ask God a question. I don't know why. I was feeling a little blue. You know the feeling… one step forward, two steps back, nothing is really going according to plan and everyone is taking me for granted… that feeling. Mahatma Gandhi once said that “Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” But let's be honest… who here has experienced the kind of peace that is unaffected by outside circumstances?? I think peace is easily stolen but we have the choice to leave the door open for the thief just to bowl on in. Anyway, I was not at peace and so I asked God a question.
“If I take away my friends and family, my little house, my career that I love and all the gifts and talents I have… If I take away all of those things from the world… who am I?” I could not find the answer. That's what we do don't we? We might ask for a mighty response, but really, we look to ourselves first to see if we already know the answer. But I'm such a visual person and while driving down the road, I imagined what it would be like with all of those things removed from the picture. And there was nothing left. Nothing. So I shrugged. Then I heard a reply. Not an answer… a reply. From what I swear was coming from the back seat of the car, I heard “well Vickie, who are you?” At that precise moment, I was feeling relieved. Relieved I had reached an intersection and not crashed my car looking at the direction of where that voice came from. Then came a flood of a hopelessness I don't think I had ever experienced before, until that day. What remained was a rudimentary beginning of an animated image of me on a blank page. That's how I began to feel. And it went on like that for three years.
I could go on at this point and describe the journey, but I won't bore you with the details. Except to say, during this depressive state, I learned a lot. So much so that the person I was is no more. Sure there are remnants… I'm still as funny as ever and I still love my family and friends and of course chocolate, but that's where it ends. All I want to share with you today, is some of the lessons I have learned in the hope it resonates with at least one of you. So here they are…
1. We are human. Big surprise. But without the “stuff” that had made me – me, all of a sudden the realisation of my own humanness had gravity. I'm flawed. I make mistakes. I'm far from perfect. And you are the same. Without the “stuff” I was a shell of a person and it was a shell I either had forgotten about or didn't know to begin with. Biology tells us that we are born from cells, passed down to create us. We are created by growing then we are born and then we grow. We multiply everything, in fact growth when we are children, is our primary biological function. We develop ideas and belief systems based on our upbringing and the development of our brain. It's all about Growth. But why is it when we get to adulthood, we decide to stop growing? As children, we didn't just grow in height, we grew our thoughts, our ideals, our moral fibre, our sense of humour, our love for others. That should never stop. In childhood it became as simple to do as growing bones, hair and acne, in that order. Why is this other kind of growth no longer second nature to us?
Now I can't see where God says to love everyone (which is good because I just refuse to love Hitler) but He did say, according to the bible, to love your enemies… that’s some serious commitment to love right there! He went as far as to sacrifice His own Son (and people hated Him) for the love of the world. Yet for some reason we can't seem to accept, tolerate, acknowledge and yes love others because they don't live like you. Man, woman, straight, gay or maybe they just don't know. White, black or somewhere in between. Big eyes, slant eyes, green eyes and red hair. Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim, Christian or Jew. Worshiping one God, many gods, demagogues or even the sun. Perhaps it's self worship, on the journey to self enlightenment, to find eternal life, peace, the edge of the world or just to eat pray love. Marmite or Vegemite, margarine or butter, meat or vegetarian. National or labour, trump or Clinton. Pro life or pro choice. Live in a world with stem cell research or live like Amish who never get sick. Climate change is getting worse or on the up and poor old Neil Armstrong walked on the moon… or maybe not. Aliens may or may not exist, some people can talk to dead people or perhaps they just might be greatest fraudsters alive. You see…. As long as there is the freedom to choose in life, there will always be enemies who go against you. That will never change.
I'm going to tell you something now that may upset you. It may upset you because you may not agree with it. But I ask that you hear me out until the end. My answer won't change, but your perception of me might. I believe that because all life is about the choices we make, so too is one example… your sexual orientation. I don't judge you if you choose to be gay and I ask that you don't judge me for being straight. That said, there is a difference. I have heard people say “I didn’t choose to be gay” but I've never heard people say “I didn't choose to be let down by my own biology.” If our primary function is to grow, the only way to grow other humans is for a female and a male to be paired together. I believe that if you fly under that rainbow banner of being gay or transgender or transsexual or anything other than heterosexual (the biological pairing), you have had to, at some point in your life, made the choice to do so.
Note, I never tried to say to you… “turn back, change your lifestyle” or “you're sinning against God!” I'm not qualified to do so. No one is. And that's my point really. I can love you, care for you and wish you all the best, just as I would do for any choices you might make in life. I hope you'd do the same for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, if you came looking for an alternative option, I'd be there to offer the option I believe in. But it’s your call. This is how I wish the world would treat each other. What is this naming and shaming that's going on? In the shell of me, I realised how easily grieved I feel that there is a considerable lack of tolerance and most importantly, love for one another in the world. Please don't judge others unless you are prepared to be judged (and no one ever truly is prepared for that.) love your neighbour. My sister loves Vegemite and yet I still love with her all my heart. Start small… and grow. For goodness sakes, grow.
2. We are capable of making mistakes. And boy have we made some doozies. But I think it's in our mistakes that we find the biggest acts of intolerance. When others falter we judge and when we are stuffing up, we do all that we can to pass the blame. In my shell of a human form I realised I can't change the fact that I make mistakes. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I suck at life. Why can't we all just admit that? Why can't we all just say a big fat “I'm sorry” to the world? Someone recently told me that there is actually no such thing as failure as long as we don't give up. But a part of me thinks that failing at stuff is just part of who we are. As long as we can learn from our mistakes, we can grow away from them.
3. What remains standing is your belief system. Which honestly surprised me. Without the stuff.. I was able to see my flaws and my beliefs… in God, in other people and in myself…. As if my belief system was somehow an organ of my body… it was right there. Like a house with just its bones in view. I know from personal experience that sick bones are a terrible thing. You owe it to yourself to nurture those spiritual bones. A belief system is an anchor for your life. Don’t knock until you've truly tried it.
4. What will be, will be. You need to choose what to battle with. And it IS your choice. Just as it is your choice to allow your peace to be stolen by circumstances and people around you. Far too many times I have seen horrific scenes on my Facebook feed that has a political agenda attached. Or Christian scenes talking about the end of days and how everything is just doom and gloom. We see it in the news, we get it from different religions and I for one have had enough. Christians who are called to be the light, are bringing more darkness than. I care to see on my newsfeed. Meanwhile the media is bringing their biased version of the news and no one, it seems, is bringing the truth. People arguing about conflicting ideals… pro choice or pro life , gay marriage, invading countries etc. Again I say, what will be will be. I'm not in Syria. So I can't comfort a child who has lost everything. Yes, I can pray, but ultimately, it's God that does the work if we ask Him. But I can also live my life by being positive, offering alternative choices to others who come calling, work in my own community, care for my own family and by being happy. That HAS to be the great example to set in this world and surely, the greatest legacy I can offer. I want my nieces and nephews to know that regardless of circumstances in this world, they are loved and that they make me very very happy. I can disagree with what's going on around me. But I can't change it by scaremongering others. I can only change my own little world that I live in. I also think as humans, we have a responsibility to do just that.
I'm learning to be happy. And it's growing every day. In the bare bones of my humanness I found that finding happiness in life is crucial. It's oxygen. It's not enough to have a happy childhood. We can't just stop there and say, “well it was good while it lasted eh?” This might seem childish to say but I really believe that happiness is a contagious force that can turn this world around. And it starts with just you and me. Love, grow, stop judging others, make mistakes, apologise when we make mistakes, nurture your soul with a strong belief in something and don't ever stop learning to be happy.
Love Vicks.
