What is it that we, and people generally, search for in life? We hear from many people and read if it, their great searches and anxiety at times at not realizing what they set out to do in their search through life. From childhood we are often in a continuous search, be it for love, truth, knowledge, acceptance, faith, money or social standing. It is a great preoccupation of people.
With this search may come uncertainty, anxiety, change and sometimes disappointment. We hope. And hope allows us to reach out to those things we search for; hoping against hope at times. The search may be within as much as the desires mentioned above. Whichever it is we follow it. We seek out and fix out desires on and steel ourselves for those trials which may be connected in pursuit of those goals and dreams.
At times we are guided: family, friends, religion. In many ways we are not only formed by these people, we can be greatly influenced in our search and choices depending on our level of trust in these people. This is nothing new – we have heard of this before. But if we are truly searching that the hoped for discovery of self and/or truth then our lives develop deeper meaning and this in turn may make our lives richer. We can then see people, events, readings etc, in the light of this search. Therefore our output as individuals, workers, family members becomes something more than mere existence. We become more fully human, more aware.
The means, the life lived, becomes an important part of the search, and of our lives. I don’t like the term “journey” which is far too overused and frequently in the wrong context. But life experiences are part of life itself and can be incorporated into the “me” the person each is.
Some may never find what they are looking for, sometimes a lifetime struggle to understand life but never full comprehension of, or acceptance of, what is. We have opportunities every day to see a little further ahead. But we don’t, won’t or can’t see the whole of it. Perhaps in a way this might be better. Baroness Karen Blixen, who wrote under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, said: “God made the world round so we would not see too far down the road”. So when we wish the search to be over, or “left off the hook” of having to try to understand events or people, we might take some comfort in that quote. Our search of today; worries and preoccupations of today, are enough as well.
Perhaps it comes down to trust: the God who made the world round and who knows all things – then all the searches of our lives would not be such a burden; it would become life itself – life lived – in goodness and truth.
