Kick

I know many well-meaning people who spend their lives as a series of all-consuming pushes.  Sometimes they roll from one to the other with little or no downtime.  Sometimes they ride one for a long time and then crash into a slump until the next one comes along.  Both of these are basically the same thing.

I don't think they mean to appear faddy.  I think they legitimately think this next thing might be the one. Or else they're chasing fireflies distracted by each new flash of light and never realizing their lack of constancy.

But that's just the thing.  Constancy.  To be sure even this can be bad if it becomes so entrenched that one lives in a rut and never changes anything, but some constancy is a good thing.  We need to be stable.  Stability lets others depend on us.  They know what we're about.  They know where we'll be.

So I encourage any reader to look at yourself.  Count up how many things you've promoted, bandwagoned, cycled through.  Are you casting about for some meaning you can't find?  Are you looking for that real thing only to keep finding falsity?  If you keep getting into things and finding them go sour, I can promise you, that isn't how things should go.  It isn't normal corruption taking over.  If this is your life, you're living in the temporal.

Certainly things change.  Good to come, good to go.  But if a year ago you were part of some group, then you started your own, then you joined another all in that time frame, I'd say you should slow down and see what you might be missing.  If you live on inspiring pushes of art or friendship or whatever only to find yourself sinking into doldrums when those things get stale or end, you might be missing something as well.  If you constantly reinvent yourself after a cycle of a few years, trying one style or self-definition after another, you really need to take a look.  If you abandon your friends for cycles of several years only to cycle back in like an orbiting comet, look at yourself.  No judgement.  Just an exhortation.  You decide for yourself.

I simply want to put to you that there is another way.  Figure out what it is that your missing.  What is common to all the beginnings or ends?  A real stable constancy is available.  A life of fulfilling relations, interests, new things, effective service is possible...just perhaps not in the way you think.  You already have everything you need allocated and waiting in the scheme of space and time.  You just have to reach out and take it.  Life is easy...it's our own selves that make it otherwise.  I'm learned this.  If what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it the same way every time.  Otherwise, I can tell you the next kick, the next ministry, the next identity, the next inspiration will end very much like all the others.