I’m not sure where this post is going, but I felt the need to share what’s on my mind. So here goes. I will do my best to not ramble, but please understand there’s a rather high probability of that happening.
I am generally a passive man. I don’t like arguments or fighting. Because of this, I have unfortunately made it a habit to go along with things that I shouldn’t, and to let people overstep my boundaries. I’ve even been chided by my own (younger) family members for being “not manly/assertive enough” which always makes me shake my head in bewilderment.
This leads me to my main point: I do not have an unlimited capacity to handle stress and conflict. None of us do. And the modern “connected” life is all about commandeering your attention using stress and conflict.
So What Is Actually Worth Fighting For?
Can you answer this question honestly? I couldn’t for a long time. Because I was inundated with outrage every single day, the only way I could cope with it was to turn off caring about anything.
Needless to say, this is a less than ideal solution, if you could call it a solution at all. Not only did it not solve any of the world’s problems, it prevented me from caring about the problems I should have been concerned with.
What things in your life are worth fighting for?
It’s okay to take a minute and think about this. Don’t rush it. Here are some suggestions:
Should you fight for your marriage? Absolutely, unless you’re being abused.
Should you fight for your kids’ protection? You need to- no one else will.
Should you take measures to protect your own personhood? It’s necessary.
Should you wrestle to define your faith, and understand God? You were created for it.
Ultimately, you will have to choose what is important enough to fight for, and what isn’t. This might make you uncomfortable. It may make those around you uncomfortable as well. But without defining this- without intentionally choosing what to care about- you’re saying that someone else gets to decide for you.
Do you want people you don’t even know telling you what to care about? I certainly don’t.
Minimalism Isn’t About Things
As I’ve said before, the key to living a happily frugal life is to scale it back to a place where you can manage it. The same goes for your feelings. If you care about everything, then you care about nothing (in particular).
This came to the forefront of my life just a few weeks ago. I had been reading through John Townsend and Henry Cloud’s Boundaries and I realized I have been afraid to care about things because it seemed overwhelming.
Because I had no real definition of what I cared about, I was stuck in the default state of letting others dictate what I was supposed to be outraged over. I was a slave to everything I read with clickbait headlines. “Can you believe they did this?”
But something interesting happened. I started thinking about what I actually cared about, what I was really passionate about. And in that process, I discovered there was a part of me that I had pushed deep down- I had hidden it away to protect myself from being overwhelmed.
When you minimize the unnecessary things in your life, you begin to really appreciate the things you have left over- things you care about. In much the same way, when you start to eliminate the endless stream of outrage, you begin to have feelings about the things you want to keep in your life.
We do not have an unlimited capacity for feelings. Unfortunately, anger expands to fill up the space we give it. Like a raging inferno, it consumes everything in its path as long as it has fuel. And today’s world has a never-ending supply of fuel.
But in the absence of constant anger, your other feelings start having room to come back to life. They begin to breathe.
This Changes Everything
The reason I couldn’t have deep meaningful relationship with my wife was because I had already used up all my “emotion points” for the day, and I had nothing left to give. But by turning off my phone and just sitting with her in silence, and letting my feelings slowly come back to life, I feel like I’ve fallen in love with her all over again.
I also now realize my relationship with God had suffered the same fate. Overwhelmed and discouraged, I had nothing left in the tank to use to grow closer to God himself. I was empty.
But this isn’t how we were meant to live. We weren’t created to live devoid of emotion, or burning ourselves out caring about things that don’t really matter.
If you’ve found yourself in the place where you can’t handle life, I want to tell you there’s hope. If you feel like you’re dead to the world, that you’ve been outraged until you’re numb, then I have good news for you.
God wants you to feel things. How can you understand God’s love for you without it? How can we really grasp the compassion of the Father unless we feel?
You can turn off the constant fear and anger, and start to feel again.
You can even start today.
Turn off your phone, close your eyes, and ask God to refresh your soul.
He is faithful. He will do it.
Amen.