"Do smoking and
drinking affect your relationship with God?" we asked a group of Muslim
boys at the hookah bar.
"Yes."
I've been thinking
for months now about what this could mean: what are the implications of such
decisions? Why do we directly disobey our own beliefs? Why do we do things that
keep us from happiness? What is happiness?
Happy [hap-ee] (adj)
- delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing
- characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy
But what does it
really mean to be happy? What does that look like?
I think the boy
answered that way because he recognized, as many of us do, that it is easier to
do what feels ok rather than what is ultimately good for us. Of course we know
that smoking leads to lung cancer and drinking to liver disease, but we do it anyways.
Just like how we worry about tiny concerns or eat that second piece of
cake--because it takes us out of our fears and into a feeling of --dare I say
it?-- peace.
In a documentary
called Happy, the interviewers ask
people in different regions of the world what the most important aim in life
is. They all say "to be happy" then go on to describe what brings
them joy. I am still amazed by the simplicity of it--a rickshaw driver loving his
job and his family, and that is his joy. Why do we find ourselves so wrapped up
in nonexistent complexities and still fail to see the simple joys?
I have been using
happiness and joy synonymously, but I
don't think that is true. I think you can find spurts of joy in the midst of
depression, but it is the lasting happiness that we ultimately seek.
And how does God fit
into it all? If we ignore the earthly pleasures (be they drinks or worry) and
turn to God, will we know happiness? Surely the answer is dependent on what a
reader's view of God is, if at all, but speaking from a Christian God perspective,
I feel a bit lost over it due to my constant recognition that those earthly
pleasures seem to offer more than the silence of God.
It goes back to the
long-term perspective: what is ultimately good for us. We are taught that
overindulgence (note: over) in earthly joys leads to consequences (as stated
above: a few examples). We are taught that obedience, faithfulness, &
repentance to God promises us eternity. I think the hardest part of that is
that it's so difficult to envision this "eternity" when all we know
is what we've seen--the current world around us.
All of these sorts
of speculations fascinate me, knowing that I will never have the answers. I can
only believe. How do the questions & the doubts affect my current search
for happiness? Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the confusion of spinning circles
of "what ifs" and "buts" and "hows" and
"whys". It's a distraction that sucks me in like a blackhole, taking
over and consuming me to distract from my initial destination of the boundless
universe of imagination.
I continuously
return to the Rilke quote "love the questions like locked rooms".
It's the nearest encouragement I have to love the questions from a distance
rather than being enveloped. Sometimes
it's incredibly frustrating: even just the knowing that I'll never know.
Sometimes it's totally freeing: it could be anything; eternity could be
anywhere or anything--the mystery of the outskirts of the universe.
Will we be happy
when we know what's next, or can we learn to know happiness when we accept the
unknown?
