I <3 H.D.T.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation..."

Back when I considered myself a philosophy honk, and even today I guess, I loved Thoreau's straight to the point, no holds barred, bone penetrating analysis on the lives of most men. I was in college at the time, and as most people at that phase in life, I knew everything... except myself. I remember even then having this quiet rage, this quiet but powerfully bubbling drive for something that wasn't yet. More frustrating still was the awareness that the intensity of desire didn't equate to an intensity of forward motion. I had vague dreams, ambiguous desires, and sharp if undefined hungers for things that seemed important.

I chased things that seemed like they might scratch the itch... I traveled around the country, I took Solomon's quest for meaning in Ecclesiastes (everything under the sun) and arrived at pretty much the same conclusion he did (vanity, vanity). For all my motion, desire, and soul heat, I was pretty much where I had been before. Mostly I was raging against the machine that was me. All that was left was Thoreau's penetrating analysis of my life... quiet desperation.

I wish I could say that since I started following Christ it had all changed. I wish I could say that now my desperation is fully satiated if constantly renewed. I wish I could say my life was a loud and constant roar of intention and purpose, fueled and driven by the fullness of the Godhead's passion.

But that's not how it goes, it would seem.

My desperation today is aimed in a different direction. It's admittedly made up of some of the same basic fabric, and it's often no less quiet and hot. I still hunger for significance, if today I realize I need to follow a different path. I still long to make a living with words and ideas, although the tone and subject of those words is different. Even more disturbingly, as I am now in my 30's, I have to admit that my quiet desperation still doesn't often enough manifest itself in the kinds of actions that would allow me to possibly realize some of the meat of those quiet desperation's (*Note: I also am now in constant realization that many of the drives I have may not be worth pursuing. Significance as I define it may be no more in the works for me than a polka-dotted hair do*)

But Thoreau left another nugget in Walden. "I went to the woods to live deliberately."

Thoreau spent significant time in the woods. Alone. Quiet. Intentionally seeking out the things that would fill in and fill out the purpose he felt pushed toward. The beauty and the drama of that statement compels me. I don't think Thoreau had it all right. I don't think his equation would lead him to the place where he ultimately wanted to be. But he put himself in the best position to discover that for himself.

I'm convinced that moving beyond a life of quiet desperation comes in living deliberately. I woke up this morning and had a choice. I could either mindlessly drift with Jackson's movie on TV (The Little Mermaid... he loves Sebastian the Jamaican crab) or I could turn my mind to try and understand my responses yesterday, the things God seemed to be whispering to me, and the things God was doing in the world around me. I can wake up tomorrow and jump into the day and deal with whatever comes or I can spend time nurturing those Holy Discontent things and setting a course of action. My action will probably often be misdirected and way off track... but it will have been deliberate, and it will allow me to learn, pray, and recalibrate.

God save me from a life of quiet desperation. God keep me from dousing the flames that would heat the boiler of passion you placed in me. God, rescue me from the drift of life where every moment appears about as insignificant as the last. Most of all, God deliver me from futility, so that I might realize even a piece of the holy, latent potential in the world around.