The Elderly and Easter

The elderly and Easter saved my day today.

I have a lot on my mind right now. I guess this is more of a ranting-journal-entry-meaningless-nothing post than I usually write, but I guess that's just it: I have a lot on my mind. I have to make some life decisions as I grow up in my twenties, and I don't know what to do with all the stuff that's on my mind.

I have a lot of those things on my mind like salaries and how to make a living all while doing work that matters and helps people and allows you to sleep at night with a life lived well. "Is that too much to ask?" I say.

My mom recently told me that I'm ridiculously talented. I then responded by saying that she was my mom and so she of course had to say that and also then mom may I ask why none of my ridiculous talents will be making me tons and tons of money?

Why is it that passionate devotion to educational equality doesn't buy you a penthouse apartment in the loop? Why is it that spunk and an odd conviction to work yourself into the ground doesn't fund trips to Europe each year? Why is it that I sometimes feel that the work that matters the most gets paid the least? Why can't I be content to stare at stock market updates and spreadsheets, make predictions and investments with other people's money, and roll around in my piles of income at the end of each pay period?  Here I am, asking why why why, and then realize that I am acting like a whiny petulant child. Maybe it's a youngest-child syndrome, but I am that whiny child far too often. Asking all of those questions, I may as well have been stomping my foot in the ground with every word.

I'm better off than 99% of the world population, and yet why am I such an ungrateful human that the fact that I won't be grossing mass amounts of money in my life matters to me?  It shouldn't matter! But I guess that's what we are and guess that's what I am: an ungrateful human. And in our ungrateful, human nature, we start to cross our arms, stomp our feet, stick out the lower lip. and ask why why why we can't have more more more.  In the middle of one of these tantrums, I started to avoid real responsibilities of my life and scroll mindlessly through Facebook. And then I see a picture  posted by my uncle that snapped me out of my funk.

It was a picture of my Grandpa Gesch and my Great Aunt Nelda, both in the early stages of their 10th decade of life. I think, maybe, that they are perhaps two of the best people living on this planet at the present moment. Two people who never rolled in the piles of their income. Two people who didn't avoid heartbreak and hard times and tough decisions, but made choices based on what was the right thing to do as far as they could tell. Two people who know who made them and why they are here. Two people who even got to go to Europe once in awhile because they saved for it in advance. I doubt they ever threw egotistical, materialistic, selfish tantrums.

And then almost immediately afterward I see a reminder pop up on my calendar I set for myself on Easter, a quote about what wondrous love laid down itself for me. And how all I need to do, in a small token of gratitude in return, is accept this love and be happy and thankful and joyful for it. I saw another quote I had saved, about how the weary and heavy laden of this world should give up their burdens, because there is freedom from drowning deep down in the pressures of life. Easter happened, and that is the best thing ever. We live after this awesome Easter; we live in the truth of knowing that darkness is defeated and light is reigning and that piles of income, although fabulous as they can sound sometimes, are not the end goal in this thing.

So for me, for the whiny child that I am, I need a reminder every. single. day. about the truth of the Elderly and of Easter. I need reminders about the heritage of faith I have and the Easter-people that came before me. I need a reminder of where my roots are and how beautiful it is to have roots like that, grounded in knowledge of this after-Easter life, life lived in the light, so that I can grow forward and up and out.