Sadness

I haven't served you Lord,

I am sorry for my life.

I ought, at every moment,

To turn it around, and make it right,

I keep thinking, holiness...must be somewhere within reach,

But like a clown I cannot seem to put together a right presentation,

It seems off and fake, and, I cannot seem to get where I would rather go.

Or to be, what I would rather be.

I cannot do it, it seems,

Like these other people seem to effortlessly do.

Perhaps it is that they have effort,

Just of a more graceful variety.

The pieces of their lives,

Come together in a contented whole,

And I even see them smiling,

They seem to understand that they are somehow right with you.

I have no such solace.

My life seems to be a muddle of confusion.

I walk in darkness, and not in light,

Or so it feels anyway.

They rejoice and, I cannot feel the cause of their rejoicing.

It seems, oddly inappropriate.

But that is me, judgmental and useless.

I wish above all, I could at least stop looking at them.

How can I get to holiness?

How can I have a right impression of it?

I see in my mind a serious person, without a jovial smile.

Serious like a priest in prayer, like someone acquainted with a personal suffering.

Serious like someone who, does not see so much to presently smile about;

Why is it I cannot seem to think in anything but seriousness?

Am I simply a kill-joy unable to joyfully praise?

I wish there were a place for me.

I wish my personality were not "invalid", seemingly dead on arrival.

I wish I could find a society with the intensity of Edward Norton in a Painted Veil.

People who do not constantly laugh and smile, and live in opulence,

But who feel a quiet intensity, with perhaps even ...seriousness.

How foreign it feels to me to always be smiling, laughing, and so ebullient.

How inappropriate it seems when outside one's door, so many people suffering.

How is everyone so joyful, even knowing this to be a temporary state?

Ought I resemble them better?

I am no one and nothing, and my life is not an actualization of righteousness.

I wish that it were.

I wish I truly could say I at least fulfilled an ascetic ideal.

Neither do I fulfill an ascetic ideal, nor do I do great things like remote doctors.

I just...exist, in this failed state. And behold the world, and my subpar service to you.

If even, there is any service at all.

How wretched to perceive my useless state in the grand scheme of things.

If only, I could forget myself.

If only I could truly do something for others such that my own anxieties would be obliterated.

If only I too could effect great Mercy in my own life.

But, in the end, there is so little I can do.

Not eating the animals and trying to not purchase foods of exploitation seems to be the maximum I can do - and at best that's simply with-holding on a few things.

It doesn't really count for anything, and the other Christians let me know of this.

What counts is what these doctors do, and teachers, and firefighters and...priests and missionaries and the like.

What of the working poor? Not that I am even one of them.

What of the rest of us, unglamorous slaves?

And yet, I am not even that. I do not even have the moral righteousness of poverty.

I perceive that I am an entire waste.

Will You have Mercy on me, who has brought nothing to the table?

And the rest of them, what would they even say of me?

Or can I finally not be...can I finally merge and be absorbed into something greater than myself, some part of You such that...I would no longer be me at all.

What a liberation it would be...if only I could be other than myself.

Will You say you "never knew me" and will I be counted with the goats? Will my fate be eternal fire in a pit? And if I do make it to heaven, supposing by some merciful exception I might make it in - then, what use could I possibly have there? I cannot seem to find any use for myself.

Will I be cast further into outer darkness - as are all the unprofitable servants?

And knowing this, why cannot I will myself to do something truly productive, like engineering?

And if I did this engineering, would it finally make things right? If I did this 2nd income thing, and gave it away to the poor, would I finally be among the "righteous"? And what would I do with the children then? Should I give them to some strangers?

Do the animals really not matter? Is mercy to them some small, inconsequential thing?

Does it truly not matter if we butcher and eat them before their time? Have I truly been a fool to concern myself with such "small matters"? Have I left the bigger ones undone?

I am lost Lord, lost, in a world, clearly, not surrounded by my friends.

People write to me Christmas cards, but I know it is because they count me for their enemies, and then, they know they are earning bonus points to write to me nice letters that they most likely do not mean, because I am their enemy, or so they consider me. That is why I feel they write at all.

I am in this house I have put to no wonderful purpose in your service.

I cannot seem to see eye to eye with anyone. I cannot seem...to do anything effective.

I cannot seem to make all my thoughts, deeds, and actions honor You.

My soul is in some awful departure, some awful cacophony from the harmony it ought rather be in. My situation is desperate, and yet, even knowing it to be eternally important, I cannot seem to make perpetually the right decisions, or even arrive at the belief that I can.

You feel very far from me, and I haven't a friend besides by nuclear family.

I hope at least, to do better serving them. To quietly not burden anyone else, and live uncontentious in our house, teaching them, my only purpose.

I hope for some miracle when I die.