From the outside looking in, my life seems quite enviable. But from the inside-out, discontent and uncertainty breeds a growing resignation tiptoeing ever closer to that final shrug and ultimate sigh. Cynicism bleeds like sap through my veins; it's how I've been conditioned to think via countless heartaches and disappointments, crushed dreams and cherished memories turned bitter by the stain of loss. Cynicism makes life easier in some ways. You learn to curb your expectations, to exercise caution when placing one's hopes. But cynicism fosters a bleak life, stripping the excitement, joy, and adventure out of everyday living. It creates a void where purpose once thrived: in a world so dark and ripe with misfortune, why aim for anything at all? Why take a swing when you've learned you can't help but strike out? This is the quiet desperation that befalls most men: an aching and unpalatable void which we seek to fill with momentary pleasures, our means to escape the dreary wasteland of the human experience, an experience characterized most poignantly by loss, disappointment, and futility.
This quiet desperation seizes me, but there's hope. The cynicism isn't ingrained: it's learned, conditioned, from the interplay of events and their interpretations. We don't perceive the world fully but through a kaleidoscope of shifting lenses. We don't have but one way of seeing the world but many, resulting in paradoxical beliefs and incongruities within our muddled worldviews. My cynicism comes not from a balanced, cogent, or objective observation of the world. It's simply a pattern of thinking and seeing that's evolved not so much from without but from within, as I've consistently interpreted life's negative events from a broken, despairing, and confused heart.
The remedy for this cynicism propagating indifference and uncertainty may lie in the root of cynicism itself, those interpretations of how my life is and why it's the way that it is. I may perceive my life as being marked by disappointment and empty dreams, void of meaning and absent substance; I may perceive myself as not cool or not smart or not attractive enough, and I may struggle with the off-balance fear that my life is all but over (damned lymphoma scare). But that's but one way to look at it: I could put on a different lens and see those things I've accomplished (graduated college, living on my own, author of several successful novels, etc.) as well as all the blessings that surround this life of mine, a life that is quite probably in its early stages. Perhaps my perception of my life should be reworked in light of a broader horizon: I have food on my table, I have my health, I can sleep in safety at night, and I have a place to live. I have a car, a cell phone, a TV, and books I can read (by God, I'm literate!). I'm surrounded by loving family and friends, and I'm in the top 1% (now that I've gotten an iPhone). On the outside, my life may look enviable, and that's because it is. People would KILL to have what I have, and I bitch and moan about not having MORE. Ultimately, the problem may not be too narrow a perception but too ungrateful a heart.
As to the reason my life is the way it is, I could interpret my life as a series of misfortunes and broken hopes (as I have consistently done for the past seven years), and in doing so I have to understand why life has turned out the way it is. Perhaps God is punishing me for not being good enough; maybe God's just mad and being mean; maybe God isn't at all interested in what's going on with me. Or maybe God's not at all to blame, but I am; and perhaps God isn't to blame, nor myself fully, but life just goes like this sometimes and reading meaning into its currents is like trying to read signs off the Potomac's surface. But if I see my life as ripe with blessings that 99% of the world craves to have as their own, then I see that I have far more than I ever deserve, and that I'm being quite the annoying and obnoxious bitch when I complain about not having "all those things I've always wanted."
The reorientation of my perspective--gratefulness for what I have, a broader view of my fortune in the world around me, the knowledge that I am loved and favored by God, blessed by him even, and that he hasn't abandoned me--fuels the eradication of the cynicism. It's not about forgetting the past; it's about approaching it from a different perspective, a different angle, seeing it in a new and refreshing way, a way that allows hope and purpose and even fosters such things.
Who do I want to be?
What do I want to do?
And how do I go about it?
The chains of cynicism holding me back must be shaken loose; the shackles must be hewn apart. The darkness must be expunged so that light can shine once more. Beyond the cynicism and its bleak and fatalistic interpretations of my life thus far, there lies a freedom beckoning me forward, inviting me to experience life anew.
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