It’s no surprise that this world takes some up-keep. Few things ‘just work’, and that certainly goes for life and the daily hassles therein, be it traffic to simple forgetfulness to emotion distress that stops us from anything remotely responsible or enjoyable.

This up-keep that is needed is a healthy aggression often labeled pro-activity or responsibility among other titles. But such things are hardly what we as full human beings want or expect out of life. Don’t get me wrong, life certainly includes continual self-giving.. but to never receive back (whether in perceived or actual form from God and/or others) is too much to bear.

Rather, in the face of all this that is required of us, we often seek that which is to us, peace. Here is where either responsibility or addictions take root. For what is peace? Has it more similarity to non-motion, inactivity or unmovedness than to activity? If peace is simply the ‘hassle-free life’, then non-motion it is. But what of relational peace? Will unmovedness suffice? Clearly not: a united mind, affection and action bring peace in that realm. Perhaps peace is to be a stoic or eastern hassle-is-as-no-hassle, betraying any true emotion in me..

I find all ‘answers’ entirely weak in light of the goodness found in renewal. Would I rather sit in unmoved fashion bitter and sulking at the cruel world around? Sure it may feel right and true for a while, but not for a lifetime. Rather, what I find in my days is so much hope and energy in the morning, and fear of the day’s work taking it all away before I can get to my true loves in life: thinking, writing, music, friends and my soon-to-be wife. These good things are part of what God has built me for.. they are good things, requiring of me. They require motion. And in good Aristotelian fashion, this motion towards them must overcome the daily stresses. This is peace.

But I’m not sure how that overcoming goes down. I know there’s something scary about human resiliency. We just won’t give up. We can, but quite often we don’t. Simple pride is enough for some, if you’ve normalized to a culture of it. But pride seems to be an all or nothing thing: if I have too much, it will drive me. If I instead take on humility, then I find myself less worn-thin, and having more energy. But If I try for the middle-lands, assuming and controlling over some small domain, then I’m worn out, seeking to regain control over something else, or nothing at all: numbness & apathy.

Peace is not the numbness from all of the external forces beating on me. Peace is not the apathy which comes either. Peace is overcoming this numbness and apathy of self-defined & controlled life of knowing-what-I-can-handle and instead being reminded and re-associated, familiarized again to truth and love. Allowing self to experience when experience has only brought hurt and frustration and tiredness and be influenced towards the foundation of this world and beyond it. Hope of goodness.

Peace is then tied to humility. And humility is enjoyment, quite near to love which moves: responsibility. That’s my taxonomy.

My trouble? I become so embedded in the day.. making me smaller than human, and less near to goodness, hope, love and truth.