OuterBliss: The Denial of Desire, Part II

Lilly!

Listening to: How old are these guys? Like twelve!? Oh, well, I'm loving their sound.

Bliss: All the other animals in the house have accepted Lilly easily, as if they felt the "vacancy" too and think she's capable of filling it. And now the house itself feels much more normal again. Louder, more active.

Yesterday I started writing about the fear of having "too much blessing" or asking too much of our lives. It seems to me that a lot of us suffer from what I will now dub HairshirtChick.

I was going to call her AsceticChick, but I actually have very little inclination toward asceticism. Come on! I love good food, good wine, good movies, and pretty, shiny things in general, and I don't deny myself these things. Actually, I could use a wee bit of asceticism sometimes.

But, no, I'm more that HairshirtChick. You know -- self-inflicted pain underneath the glitter outfit.

My particular hairshirt is the not wanting to want too much variety. I feel so very blessed with love in my life. I feel blessed with good food and good wine and good friends and a beautiful house and time to write and time to play.

How dare I ask for more?

When people are hungry in Africa?

Does that sound familiar?

But we did not choose to be born into material comfort; we were. Now it is up to us to decide what to do with that. Just because we are higher on Maslow's hierarchy of meeting our needs doesn't mean we aren't allowed to reach for the top -- self-actualization.

Actually, it kinda means we are obligated to reach for the top.

To whom much is given, much is expected.
--Luke 12:48

You can say the opposite too: from whom much is expected, much is given. I'm reading Aquinas right now (geekchick galore here), and he talks a lot about this. In his terms, you are given the grace needed to accomplish what you were sent here to accomplish.

(Which reminds me of a poster I had hanging in my dance space when I was in my teens: God doesn't give you a dream without giving you the means to make it come true.)

And I do think about this especially in terms of wasted talent. Many of us are given so much talent, so much access to the universal muse, and we let it rot. Spending more of our time whining about "how" rather than getting to the "what."

Or we sit around thinking the talent we have is not good enough.

Or noble enough.

As if the only thing worth doing on this whole planet is working in the E.R. in some inner city. As if humans wouldn't go hungry, wouldn't starve for want of beauty and poetry and music...

You could say that giving into your HairshirtChick is quite the opposite of holy -- it's selfish. It's also self-destructive.

Giving into HairshirtChick allows you to remain StuckChick. Questioning why you've been given so much rather than going out to use it is a futile exercise in self-centeredness squared.

What hairshirt are you wearing that's keeping you from doing what you were meant to do?