On Swiss Cheese And Puppet Strings

I was born inside my own head. Nothing has ever convinced me otherwise.

Since I was a child I have always been a thinker. That does not mean I have always been thoughtful. But a thinker nonetheless. And this obsession, I suspect, comes from arrogance. The quiet belief that the world I can imagine is just a little better than the one given to me.

I will be enjoying a meal with a friend while thinking about the next dinner. Celebrating an upcoming wedding while already imagining the next celebration. Enjoying a bottle of wine while anticipating the older one aging in the cupboard. Sitting beside my wife in a quiet moment while daydreaming about the next vacation we might take.

And I find myself strangely emptied by it.

All this longing for something better makes me miss the best that stands before me. A gentleman waiting for a handshake while I am thinking about the next high five.

There is a vanity to this way of thinking. It is like chasing a distant kingdom that moves two steps for every one I take.

What exactly am I searching for that this life is not good enough?

If I am always looking for better, what could ever be my best?

I often look at life the way one looks at Swiss cheese.

Every good thing has holes in it. Through those holes I see another world peeking through. Another life. Another version of myself. A happier self. So instead of resting in the present I lean forward toward the next thing.

But life slips through my hands like water. It never quite takes the shape I want it to. I am helpless before the tolling of its bell and before the sudden sufferings that arrive without warning.

The only thing I can do is stop and smell the roses along the way.

And I fail at that more often than I care to admit.

What is life after all?

Is it not simply a series of experiences. A story we witness, watch, and participate in.

Yet we spend so much time fixated on the future. But the future is not life.

The future is fantasy.

My instinct is to look at life like Swiss cheese. But perhaps I should look at it more like puppet strings.

I ask again. What is life?

Is it not simply a series of connections?

And why are those connections so necessary for us?

There are evolutionary answers of course. Herd instinct. Collective survival.

But our need for one another seems deeper than survival. It feels purposeful. As though we need each other not merely in a physical sense but in a spiritual one.

I can think of many miserable people surrounded by crowds. Safe. Comfortable. Yet their souls are unknown. Their hearts unloved.

Perhaps their appearance is admired. Their success celebrated. Their wealth envied.

But they themselves are not loved.

And tell me, do they not ache?

Would you not ache?

Why is this so?

I suspect it is because we are personal beings made by the Personal Being.

Why would God create at all except to share life with His creation?

If that is true then perhaps the proper way to see life, the way the Teacher in Ecclesiastes urges us to see it, is not with a restless horizontal gaze but with an upward posture.

Instead of staring through the holes in the Swiss cheese and studying every possible better world, we should look upward and give thanks for the world we have been given.

Each good thing.

Each moment of connection.

Each small joy.

These are puppet strings held by a gracious Father.

They are reminders that life is not random but gifted.

So practice thankfulness. Test it.

Receive each moment as it comes. See if your heart does not rise instead of sink.

We are personal creatures. So let us live personally rather than merely practically. Not anxiously planning every future day but walking faithfully in the days given to us.

For these days are gifts.

And perhaps the secret of joy is simply this.

Stop searching for a better life.

Start receiving the one already given.