You know those movies that are based around two people searching for each other? Often, toward the beginning, the two people will be in the same place, but barely miss each other; then the entire rest of the movie is spent following them on some convoluted quest to find the other person. The particular scene in which they come that close to finding each other is always miserable (or maybe I just get too involved in movies I am watching!) because you realize that they could avoid all of the heartache, frustration, and production costs (LOL) that the ensuing adventure will entail. They often end up passing by the same hallway or room within seconds of each other, so frantically searching for the person that they completely miss them. There is always a moment in which they are both in the same frame—as an audience member, I find myself wanting to scream, He’s right there!!—much to the chagrin of the people watching the movie with me.
Sometimes I feel like that person. I feel like I am frantically searching for something or someone that feels just beyond my grasp. My heart longs for something beyond this life, beyond the petty pursuits of selfish pleasure, money, and acceptance.
Working with high school students, I continuously talk to people who have giant, sweeping passions and goals. Some of these pursuits have been placed upon them by their parents who intently try to live vicariously through their children. Some of these students have simply been enticed, even seduced, by what humanity values: power, money, fame, notoriety, attention.
It’s often an extracurricular activity, such as basketball or orchestra. Occasionally it’s even schoolwork—the goal of eventually becoming a doctor often requires a lifetime of good grades! Or this pursuit can be a person; it’s easy to meet someone and suddenly wrap your future around a dream of being with that person forever.
It’s easy to let the pursuit of these things become the oxygen to a person’s soul. When you devote your entire life to something, or a couple things, often less important facets of life begin to flake away. Like limbs that have atrophied, the lack of attention to some areas that inherently comes with a single-minded pursuit will cause those areas to eventually die off. When a something like a sport or a girlfriend/boyfriend becomes the oxygen to a person’s soul, other things in life will fall away.
Something else also comes with these pursuits. Something within these individuals still screams I want more!! Something still causes us to long for something bigger. We have been built, as a people, to long for something greater than ourselves. We will avidly search for wealth or power or acceptance and yet something builds within us all to become part of something bigger.
Our soul always craves more. And so it searches for more in the places it has been trained. It seeks acceptance from people. It seeks the short-lived enjoyment that money and career can provide. It lives off of the oxygen that it has been trained to breathe.
And yet, we still long for something bigger, don’t we? We still, after minutes or lifetimes of building ourselves around these worldly constructs, lie awake at night wondering why we don’t feel fulfillment. We still feel unloved, we still feel like there is more out there for us. We feel like the people in those movies, searching for something that is at hand—and yet, just out of our reach. We’ll catch glimpses of it, but soon it is gone as we blindly pursue happiness in all of the static ways the world tells us to.
We’re all searching for more, aren’t we?
