hungering for more

As I look at my mundane, unexciting, run-of-the-mill life, I can’t help but hunger for more. Hunger for life. For vitality. For a new kind of blood to course through my veins. I want so much more than I have now. I’m not talking about material possessions. I’m talking about the quality of life that I live. I want more, life abundant and beautiful, a life that seems more like an orchestra or ballet or rave than waiting at the doctor’s office till they invite you in and tell you that you have some type of incurable disease. I have a frightening nightmare every now and then: I’m twenty-five years old, sitting at a bar, throwing down shots and smoking a cigarette, drowning out my misery and suffocating in regret. I want so much more than I have now. But this is life: what you want, you can’t have; what you have is taken away; and happiness is as fleeting as the spring rains. Or maybe this is cynicism. Maybe my idea of being a realist is just self-deception. Maybe I need to pull some unknown mask from over my eyes, or at least see the world through a different lens. I have sought happiness in achievements, in popularity, in wealth, in romantic relationships. None of it offered happiness, and yet I constantly pursued happiness through those things. Each came with more stress, more anxiety, more emptiness. Right now I am wrestling with pursuing happiness down an avenue which promises no happiness but only more emptiness. Why is it that we as human beings are so apt to search for happiness and contentment in ways that glorify the self? Maybe here is the issue: when we seek happiness through our own glorification, we fail; and our failure is due to the fact that we exist not to glorify ourselves but to glorify Another. By seeking happiness through our own successes, our own achievements, our own accomplishments; or through our own wealth, our own prosperity, our own material possessions; or through our popularity, our fame, our social networking; or through any kind of relationships that caters to the need of the self instead of being outward focused; maybe by searching for happiness through these things we fail because we are not designed to glorify the self.