This thing we call the Human Experience

I guess I've been thinking a lot about what is really important in life. Recently I watched a documentary called The Human Experience, about a boy who decided he really wanted to seize the human perspective. He spent time living as a homeless person in the streets of New York. He worked as a volunteer in a South American children's home. He visited with people in a Ghanaian leper colony. It just made me wonder, what is this thing that we do? This life that we live? Is it survival or is it living? Do we find wisdom in our daily life? Can we see God's hand in everything we do? But maybe questions are not important. A wise person knows that they don't all need to be answered. To experience wonder is the greatest joy of all. They say that suffering is a journey deeper into the heart of life. 


 Pleasure is fleeing. Our next meal won't last us very long. Our next relationship probably won't work out. Even though we sleep every night, we still never have enough. And we never will. The Human Experience is knowledge. Not sex, not a good meal, not a first kiss, not a long nap, not a pay raise, not a new pair of shoes. It is perspective. There are some things that are universal to all humans. Find those things. Because for the person who wants to live, it won't matter how painful it is. Risk and fear become small parts of the mind, overshadowed by a more enduring feeling. Hope. Purpose. Everyone needs to know that they have some small and unique contribution to the world. It's the idea that  "Just like playing music, each of us has our musical note that we have to play. And if you know that's your note, then no one can play that music. The whole composition is waiting for you to play your note."  

Our Search for Happiness

But pleasures are like poppies spread:

You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white—then melts for ever;

Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;

Or like the rainbow’s lovely form

Evanishing amid the storm.

(“Tam o’ Shanter,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns [1897], 91, lines 59–66)

Pleasure never was happiness. 

The problem is that too many of us try to consume happiness rather than generate it. Shakespeare expressed a philosophy inAs You Like It that seems commendable:

 “I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good” (act 3, scene 2, lines 65–67).

Another poet said:

Success is speaking words of praise,

In cheering other people’s ways,

In doing just the best you can

With every task and every plan.

It’s silence when your speech would hurt,

Politeness when your neighbor’s curt.

It’s deafness when the scandal flows

And sympathy with others’ woes.

It’s loyalty when duty calls.

It’s courage when disaster falls.

It’s patience when the hours are long.

It’s found in laughter and in song.

It’s in the silent time of prayer,

In happiness and in despair.

In all of life and nothing less,

We find the thing we call success.

Through every trial you should be proud God had the confidence that you could do this. Happiness does not stem from the solution to a problem, but from the personal development we go through. Hardships breeds perspective. Opposition breeds esteem. Instead of saying "Why me?" Say "Thank you" instead.