A Realistic Look at Life

I can still hear my father saying to me, “Who told you life would be easy?” If one of my many childhood wishes did not come true, I’d rant and rave about how unfair life was. Immersing myself in self-pity, I would let the whole family know that when others tried something or wished for something or worked towards what appeared attainable, fate would extend a kind and giving hand, but not so for me. “Who told you life would be easy?” my father would repeat. They were words of wisdom, which fell on deaf ears. It was not what I wanted to hear.

To me, in those growing-up years, frustration was the common result of so many of my endeavors. Without my father to remind me about life’s struggles and often its unfairness, who knows! I might have grown into a very paranoid adult, believing God had it in for me. Maybe some sin I committed was so grievous God could not forgive me, and to show His displeasure, hung too high above my reach those succulent grapes, depriving me of the taste of success.

I am much older now, and wiser too. My father, who told parables to teach us about life’s unpredictability, is gone now from this world. My mother, with stories of her own about the certainty of the next life, is likewise gone. Often I think of them. How blessed I was to be one of their children! Without pampering, spoiling, or indulging me, they painted a true picture of what life was about. “Some days it rains,” Papa would say, “and some days it’s sunny. Make the best of it either way.”

I know from trial and many errors this world cannot offer us all that we desire. To believe that it can only adds to one‘s disappointments. What this world can least provide is a feeling of inner peace. It is an imperfect world, one that, unlike its Creator, is finitely destined to end one day. The seemingly invincible mountains will crumble. The oceans wash away. The myriad stars tumble into gaseous nothingness. All nature in its own season reaching the end of life.

It doesn’t require genius to ask essential questions of this dying life and world of ours. What happens when life ends? What happens when this imperfect world is no longer ours?

Oh, God bless Mama! I remember how she taught us to pray. “Talk to God,” she’d say. “leave everything to His Will. He died for us so we could live like Him and join Him someday in Heaven.”

We were not well-to-do. Much of life’s fineries we went without. Dreams of riches and fame and worldly success remained empty dreams, but we always had a friend in Jesus! He was always there to see us through the vagaries of life, those up times of short-lived laughter, those down times of intrusive sorrow. Because our mother taught us well, we feel safe in God’s palm. We know that with Him in our corner, who in this imperfect world can do us harm?

“This life’s a passageway,” Papa said so many times. “Do what good you can as you walk through it. Be in the world, but don’t let the world be in you!”

Life can be as easy as we let it. We can walk through it alone and convince ourselves we are enough. Or we can acknowledge a loving God Who created us, saved us, and loves us more than our imperfect minds and hearts in this life could ever understand.

_____________________

Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who plies his craft many hours a day. His poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, U. S. A. Today, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, Christian Science Monitor, Thinking Ten, Pen 10, and Six Sentences. He was the recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award in 2007.