By: Gabriela Yareliz
Reading Jane Austen is upsetting, sometimes. The author had such a sad life, but she made sure to give her characters happy endings. It just isn’t real.
I heard recently that one of our greatest sources of unhappiness is when we fight reality. As humans, we do this a lot. We hold onto our thoughts and distortions like our life depends on it. What is revealed is that the secret to our happiness is in our expectations.
I loved the thought expressed here by Dennis Prager. I agree with him wholeheartedly. We don’t need to be shocked when things go awry. Life is made up of exactly that– when things go haywire. If it’s not wild– are you really living? We numb ourselves or keep ourselves in bubbles, but to be truly alive means to feel pain, to feel inconvenience, to feel devastation, and also, to feel joy. Living means you feel it all.
Prager also states that wisdom is the key here. Wisdom only comes from God, scripture notes. As we mature and walk alongside God, understanding His wisdom, we grow to understand life a bit more (or at least to understand His sovereignty over that which we don’t understand). We learn to be ok, even in our pain and confusion.
We all need to learn to wrestle with reality less. We need to accept what we cannot control, and we need to stop expecting a painless life. We may think we don’t have that expectation, but the truth is revealed when life crosses us. Are we ok? Are we ready? Or are we expecting a Jane Austen book situation?
We need to raise our children to be warriors and prepared to face life’s cruelty and unpredictability instead of raising a disappointed and disoriented generation. We do the world a disfavor when we raise children who think life is a fantasy that caters to them. It renders an immature adult.
When we have realisitic expectations– when we accept reality, we grow in wisdom and can face life, in all its unfiltered glory, unfazed. When we are able to do this, we win. Winning is not the Jane Austen happy ending, but the one who stands to the very end.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 