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Friday, May 10, 2019

All That We Are

So, I was in one of my moods the other night after taking my injection. Since the most I can do on those days in lay down and try not to be nauseous and achy (think of the mild flu), I tend to do a lot of thinking. For some reason on this day, I went way deeper than I usually do when I don't feel well.

What I started out thinking was that we as humans don't often realize just how much more we are than flesh and blood. (And I have no idea how that sentence sounds because I'm foggy today so bear with me.) We tend to our flesh - with food and drink and sex and drugs and all the emotions we can muster up - but do we pay enough attention to the rest of what we are?

By the way, when I was looking for an image to post here, this perfectly suitable one popped up on Pinterest:



I personally think of my body as being only maybe ten percent of who and what I am. The body is what you see, but my mind and soul and thoughts and inner mystery is the most significant part. The body is just a vessel - convenient but overrated. The body is really the part of us that causes our sorrows - or most of them. It's the keeper of our health and our sins and our weapon of negative actions.

A quote that I always loved - though I misunderstood and wrongly attributed to C.S. Lewis - goes something like this:
You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
While I get that the theology of the statement is a little crooked, I still like the core of what it means to me. I realize that I am a body imbued with a soul and, thankfully also the Spirit indwelling. What the quotation means to my train of thought though is that we don't think as much as we should about our souls. Our neglect of the soul is the root of so many troubles.

I think that when people say that they can "sense" something good or bad about a person, what they are feeling is the character of that person's soul. Often, when I meet someone, I will feel something really positive or really negative vibing between us. They can be a completely decent person who I just get a bad feeling about or a seemingly horrible person who I feel safe with. I've been wrong at times of course, but a lot of the time, I'm proved right. Also, I can meet someone and just know that I want them in my life. That's how I met my best friend.

The world - or rather, society and its norms - have trained us to be more aware of and to react more to people based on having (or lacking) so-called good looks, success, charisma, or the 'It' factor. I believe this is how we made bad choices in friends, relationships, and safety. There are murderers who have charm and looks. There are great-looking people who will ruin your life if they get a chance. Some psycho- and/or sociopathic people thrive because of the shallow nature of the rest of us.

People who look deeper and feel deeper and think deeper are so often thought of as 'strange' or odd. I had a hard time when I was younger because I just didn't care as much about the same things as most of my peers did. I was never the person who felt comfortable at parties or other common social situations. I would find myself trying to have a good time but getting distracted or lost in my thoughts about what was going on around me. Thank God I had wonderful parents. They let me know that it was okay not to fit in everywhere. They would tell me not to worry about have a lot of friends and just to try having good friends. Plus, I come from a large extended family so I had cousins and such. Being a military kid was a blessing and a curse since I was never going to be around the same crowd of kids for long.

Once again, because of brain fog, I've kind of forgotten where the hell I was traveling on this train of thought! Mainly though, I just wanted to talk about how we don't get to know other people - or even ourselves - as well as we should because we never look deep enough.

I will give up trying to pull my thoughts back together and just update this post if I can on another day. Of course, I'm pretty sure my brain will wake up all ready to cooperate just when I get good and sleep tonight...

Peace
--Free