Roads Ahead

Sorry to my avid readers. It's been a while and I'm sure you have missed me. Anyway, God has been on my mind so I figured I'd write about it. I want to get an MBA as well as an engineering undergrad. But this question keeps creeping into my head and it just keeps being asked "How does your plan matter?"

In John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" there is a character that has so much potential as he grows up but for some reason he's still living with his parents and working on their farm depressed. When a character asks his father why this is happening the father, Samuel, responds (paraphrased) "Tom is fighting with greatness. He doesn't know if he wants to be one of the great men in the world or if he wants to live a normal life. The greatest men are also the loneliest. But if if he doesn't choose soon, it will overcome him."

While others may roll their eyes at my ability to relate to Tom, I do. Most of my life since high school I've thought that I could do something that could change the world and that I could be one of the great men in the world but that to do so I would have to throw everything I had into it. That complete isolation from my peers may be necessary to do what needs to be done. Is changing the world enough? What is it without someone to admire the change with? Was that what God was for His prophets?

But then again, what's the point of living a normal life? If I don't bleed, if I don't feel euphoria, if I can't cry, if I don't experience all the joys and pains that God provided me, then what is my goal? I asked one of my friends what his life goal was and his response was: "To live comfortably" Please reread that. His life goal is to be comfortable...not to pursue a hopeless romance that works out, not to write the next great novel, not to pursue God, and not even to improve the lives of his peers..."to live comfortably...." Can such a person be considered a man? Seems cowardly to me. But maybe he's just being honest. Maybe that's what we all actually pursue. It's not our goal theoretically but maybe if we look at our actions we'll see that that is our goal in practice. How many times have I cowered from expressing my interest in a beautiful woman, from trying so hard I no longer could say I wasn't really trying (committing), from pursuing God without holding back some of myself, or from even taking a shower cold enough to take my breath away? By being comfortable nothing has happened to me and looking at my actions I can't see why anything would.

The roads ahead need to be full of risk, fear, dangers, tears, pain, pain, pain, God I need to feel it. I need to feel true despair and to know that I could never feel worse. But not only that, the road needs to have joy, laughter, tears, and love. I need to experience the first list before I can truly experience the second. Trying to limit my time in the first list makes it impossible to spend any real time in the second. And God needs to be in all of it. I need that guy because chances are I'll try to cower out at some point and I need Him to remind me that Adam and Eve were not put on Earth to watch TV and eat frozen dinners. They were put on Earth and told to live and multiply but that means so much more. They were meant to swim through rivers, hike mountains, hunt prey, feel. They were ordered to feel, not to dull their senses...