Empty? Lonely?

 Crisis is a word enjoying an incredible resurgence these days. For a lot of us crisis has been the norm for our entire adult lives. Had we been paying that much attention then it is likely that crisis was the norm for our childhood too. We just seem to muddle our way through from one to the next. Some of those crises may have actually been resolved at some point, though we're not likely to have noticed due to our preoccupation with the crisis of the day/week/month/year. You never hear discussions about how a crisis was solved. You only hear how a crisis "has passed", or has been "narrowly averted". The narrowly averteds are my personal favorite.

The thoughts just expressed above pertain to crises in the general sense. Crisis as played out upon the public stage. Cash crisis. Energy Crisis. Labor crisis. Educational crisis. I'm hardly scratching the surface here! It's a long list. Crisis has come to apply in so many other ways. There is an epidemic of personal crises, some real, some only imagined. Crisis of confidence, in all of it's many forms. It seems that this insidious word has entered the very cellular makeup of our collective being.

There are legions of people out there who surely MUST be enduring soul crushing existential crises on a daily basis. Most of them before lunch. The sure tell of this are the number of wannabe gurus with a Youtube channel or a Tik-Tok account with a Heinz 57 to the ninth power variety of solutions to your troubles. Feeling Empty? Lonely?Don't worry. Somebody has got your fix. Hopefully.

Feeling rather bad about ourselves, aren't we? As well we might. I'm not going to offer you any solutions. I won't point you to Jesus, or Buddha, certainly not the Church of Scientology. I'm not selling anything. No salvation, no redemption. Those things are free and you need to find them on your own. You are on a journey my friends.

Whether your goal is redemption or salvation there is a path. That is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive. I am not a Christian, nor do I ever claim to be. That does not mean I know nothing about it. Important in Christianity are the concepts of penance and repentance. Penance is an act or acts; repentance is a process. You may find some measure of redemption in penance, but only through repentance will you find salvation.

That shit, empty, lonely feeling you have inside? That is called suffering. Suffering is actually good for you. It instills humility. Suffering is your penance. If you do not learn from your suffering then you are only doomed to continue your suffering. There is only one step remaining after this. And that is also on you.