I’m tired and I am especially sick and tired of life with its same old, same old routine 24/7. I want life to be exciting and full of interesting experiences. I want to be anywhere but here in the place with the people I work with or have a relationship with or even depend upon for help. In other words, I want to be special, not like the rest of humanity. The common denominator is I am bored and believe that everyone around me is at fault since, if they did things my way, everything would be fine. This scenario is played out the lives of countless peoples every day and is the cause of stress and anxiety.
There is no magic pill to wipe away these feeling unless you want spend lots of money to support the pharmaceutical industry and walk around in a semi fog most of the time. However, other options are available. We are ordinary people who live in ordinary time. Our society and culture tell us “ordinary” is boring and leads us to believe ordinary is bad and that someone or something else is responsible for how I feel. This, of course, is the wrong question. The real question is what is going on inside of us. Do we really care for and nurture our spiritual/religious life or are we dependent upon our job, our friends, our family to give us identity? So many times, our identity is attached to how much money we make, our position in society, or what other people think of us. When these are removed so is our identity.
An alternative is to ask ourselves what do we bring to a situation. How do does our presence enhance a situation, a relationship, our employment better? A story illustrates what this looks like in action:
An elderly, retired professor and a former student were coming back from dinner. The professor stopped at a kiosk to buy the evening paper.
He greeted the clerk saying, “Good evening Fred.”
Fred responded, “What’s good about it, old man?”
The professor paid for the paper and as he was leaving said, “Have a good evening and say ‘hello’ to the family.”
When he rejoined his former student, the student said, “He was not very nice.”
The professor replied. “Oh, he is like that every evening, but I refuse to let his bad humor dictate how I behave.”
How often do we allow a situation or another’s bad behavior to dictate our response to life and situations in general? In the book of Genesis, we read that we are created in the divine image. Since God is unseen, it is we who have the responsibility of being the reflection of God, love and mercy, care and concern, to the world where we live and work. This only happens when we let go of allowing people, situations, experiences to define who we are. Remember we came into the world with nothing and will leave it the same way, bringing with us only how we were a reflection of God’s presence and made ordinary time extraordinary.
Featured Image Photo Credit: Flickr: Michael Matti