I kissed homeostasis good-bye

I get mad at God sometimes. I was a little ticked at him around lunchtime today. I was sitting alone at the top of the DC and sort of yelling at him in my head. It seems like I’m in this endless cycle of getting exactly what I want only to have it taken away. This usually works out alright in the end because God’s pretty good at meeting my ultimate needs rather than my wants, but I still get pretty miffed when I lose something I thought God wanted me to have.

I was upset that things aren’t ok in my life. Granted, I want things to be more than just “ok,” but tranquility sounds like the ideal. Looking back on the past month or so of my life, things seemed pretty perfect. Now my ship has run aground. It’s not like anything is destroyed, my soul is still intact. I’m just a little battered, a little bruised, and I’m caught up in this horrible tension that I just wish would go away.

So after I mentally railed at God for a minute or so as to why my life isn’t copasetic, I looked down at the book sitting in my lap and God said to me (through Viktor Frankl):

“I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis,’ i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather a striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” (Man’s Search for Meaning)

And so I’m caught up in this struggle, this tension as I strive to ascribe meaning to my current discomfort. It’s not always going to be a fun challenge but it’s a challenge nonetheless. At least I feel better about not being where I want to be.