STORYTIME!
So my roommate just walked into the room, telling me about how he has to proofread the essay of a friend of ours. Jolly good, Peter. Then he joked that I should do it since my English proofreading skills are better, then…wait, let me put this in dialogue form:
Peter: Heeeeeeey, you should do it since your English proofreading is better than miiine.
Mark: (Evading suggestion) Umm…shouldn’t you want to improve your own skills?
Peter: Oh psh, I’m gonna be an East Asian language translator after college; I don’t need English!
Mark: So you really want to become a translator?
Peter: Well, my real dream is to become a TV show host, haha.
Good story, yeah? Yeah, not really. THE POINT IS I like to bother myself with this question of what my plans are for life. My whole life I’ve been thinking in terms of “journalist, actor, lawyer, etc.” and have been wary of people saying “I just want to be happy”. I felt like that was the ultimate cop-out in making a decision.
But I get it now. I just want to be happy. I want to give back to my parents and make their last years kick-ass. I want to learn the languages I’ve wanted to learn but could never afford to take a class for. I want to die having been everywhere I plan on being and then some. I guess I just need to put everything in God’s hands.
But people like to see “putting everything in God’s hands” as a cop-out too. I don’t. The only way any of us will be able to have our cake and eat it too is if we let God hold the cake. That might mean living by His terms, though, but whatever; we have all of humanity to figure what exactly those are. If He needs me to proofread a friend’s paper right now, so be it. That’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, though: be happy with what you have and what you have will make you happy.
But maybe that’s the point. We have the whole world, and that’s quite a lot of happiness.
