Women are never completely happy with the hair that they are born with. The ones born with curly hair want straight hair, and the ones with straight want curly. We spend a lot of time and money teasing, torturing our hair to make it look the way we want it, and sometimes still hating the results.
There's nothing wrong in putting some effort into looking good and thereby feeling good about oneself but there is a line which when we cross, takes us into a world of obsessive, narcissistic tendencies, and where our emotional wellbeing, based on our appearance, rises and falls like the stock market. An unhealthy state of affairs that can easily breed disordered desires.
Just as we cannot completely change physical attributes like our hair, we cannot change the circumstances of our birth, or our experiences in life. However, we can change the way we look at them, and how we then choose to act.
What may seem like constraints may become platforms for happiness.
Manfred Max-Neef classifies fundamental human needs* as subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Out of these needs our desires are born.
Margaret Silf talks about how we respond to our desires in chapter eight of Landmarks by either taking or giving. Do our desires (disordered) breed an inner consumerism, driving us "to suck things into ourselves", resulting in a "diminishment of the desired object"?
Or do our desires (ordered) draw a response that moves us out of ourselves into a creative relationship, whereby we surrender "something in our hearts to the power of the 'other'" leading to transformation and an enriching encounter between us and the other?
Are we grateful for the graces we have received and in turn bless others by paying it forward, for fulfilling our desires must be more than just a purely self-gratification exercise, seeing as we are social beings living on one planet together. What is good for me must be good for the other.
In my younger days, my desire for love led me to choose relationships that were self-serving, crippling and destructive to my emotional wellbeing. I was more unhappy than happy. I can now clearly see how disordered my desire for love was back then for there was no peace in my heart and I was a total mess.
My desire for love has not changed today. But what has changed is that I have chosen to give my heart to one man to lead me to a deeper understanding of my desires, the desires He has put into my heart. Call Him God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, He alone knows the inner workings of my heart and waits on me to reveal them to me, if I but ask Him and listen.
Even without husband or children, I feel loved and I experience contentment and the deep joy of having an intimate and living relationship with my Almighty. He who feeds me with "honey from the rock" and "kisses me with kisses of his mouth", with a "love more delightful than wine".
Pope Paul VI said in Gaudium et Spes that man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self. This is a truth I discover more and more each day. For in the sincere giving of self, I find I receive much, much more than I expect.
As Silf pointed out: "No one ever does what they don't choose to do." So amidst all our conflicting desires, we can choose to submit them to God and follow His lead. To transform our disordered desires into something that brings life, joy and beauty not just to us but to those around us.
It begins first with an acceptance of who we are, confronting our darkness and embracing our weaknesses. Learning to love the recalcitrant parts of ourselves like our hair and see the beauty of God's creation in us.
Choosing to order our desires in the light of God's love.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs
There's nothing wrong in putting some effort into looking good and thereby feeling good about oneself but there is a line which when we cross, takes us into a world of obsessive, narcissistic tendencies, and where our emotional wellbeing, based on our appearance, rises and falls like the stock market. An unhealthy state of affairs that can easily breed disordered desires.
Just as we cannot completely change physical attributes like our hair, we cannot change the circumstances of our birth, or our experiences in life. However, we can change the way we look at them, and how we then choose to act.
What may seem like constraints may become platforms for happiness.
Manfred Max-Neef classifies fundamental human needs* as subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Out of these needs our desires are born.
Margaret Silf talks about how we respond to our desires in chapter eight of Landmarks by either taking or giving. Do our desires (disordered) breed an inner consumerism, driving us "to suck things into ourselves", resulting in a "diminishment of the desired object"?
Or do our desires (ordered) draw a response that moves us out of ourselves into a creative relationship, whereby we surrender "something in our hearts to the power of the 'other'" leading to transformation and an enriching encounter between us and the other?
Are we grateful for the graces we have received and in turn bless others by paying it forward, for fulfilling our desires must be more than just a purely self-gratification exercise, seeing as we are social beings living on one planet together. What is good for me must be good for the other.
In my younger days, my desire for love led me to choose relationships that were self-serving, crippling and destructive to my emotional wellbeing. I was more unhappy than happy. I can now clearly see how disordered my desire for love was back then for there was no peace in my heart and I was a total mess.
My desire for love has not changed today. But what has changed is that I have chosen to give my heart to one man to lead me to a deeper understanding of my desires, the desires He has put into my heart. Call Him God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, He alone knows the inner workings of my heart and waits on me to reveal them to me, if I but ask Him and listen.
Even without husband or children, I feel loved and I experience contentment and the deep joy of having an intimate and living relationship with my Almighty. He who feeds me with "honey from the rock" and "kisses me with kisses of his mouth", with a "love more delightful than wine".
Pope Paul VI said in Gaudium et Spes that man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self. This is a truth I discover more and more each day. For in the sincere giving of self, I find I receive much, much more than I expect.
As Silf pointed out: "No one ever does what they don't choose to do." So amidst all our conflicting desires, we can choose to submit them to God and follow His lead. To transform our disordered desires into something that brings life, joy and beauty not just to us but to those around us.
It begins first with an acceptance of who we are, confronting our darkness and embracing our weaknesses. Learning to love the recalcitrant parts of ourselves like our hair and see the beauty of God's creation in us.
Choosing to order our desires in the light of God's love.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs
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