yearning

I'm a constant yearner. I'm always thinking of places I want to go, things I want to do, stuff I want to accomplish. Or else I'm reminiscing about all the places I've already been, things I've already done, or stuff I've already accomplished. Sometimes I feel bad about how much time I spend dreaming or reminiscing about other places. Yet at the same time, I want to be fully present where I am right now - but that's really hard, when you've left little pieces of yourself in so many different places.

I've learned over the past couple years though that the more I experience, the more I want to experience. I've loved every single experience I've had - but it always leaves me wanting more.

I wonder if sometimes people wish that I would just 'grow up' (for lack of a better word). To quit yearning for more. To quit dreaming about the places in my life I have yet to go. To just be happy with what I have right now, and settle down and live the life expected of me already.

But if there's one thing I don't yearn for, it's that comfortable life everyone expects of me. I don't want to be seen as an irresponsible person - shying away from responsibilities of any kind (marriage, kids, house). Because I'm not that person. Maybe I'll have all those things someday. Maybe not. Yet, even if I am blessed by them in the future, I know I'm not the kind of person who will be content to just settle in and live my life. Because I've seen too much of this world to allow myself to do that. I know I'll always be searching for more - more adventures, more experiences, more ways to help, to serve, to love.

A couple weeks ago, I was reading 'Mere Christianity' by CS Lewis (which I loved, by the way). I think I wrote half the book down in my journal as words to remember. One of the passages that I really loved talks about how the fact that we find desires in ourselves that can never be fully fulfilled points to the fact that we were made for another world.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe in a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.

So, maybe my yearning isn't all a bad thing. It reminds me that as a Christian, this world is not my 'home'land. And while I'm going to appreciate all the blessings in my life, and do all I can, while I'm here to make this world better, I know that this isn't it for me. It's just a taste of what is to come, and I just need to make sure that my yearning points me towards my true home. Someday I will be at home in a land where I will no longer yearn, and where my desires will be fully satisfied.