“I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn’t do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I’m healthy. I’ve never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I’m- I’m loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it’s- it’s nothing like what your originals left. It’s a good world, a beautiful world. It’s not perfect, but we’ve fixed it so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet every fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and… and just… tired, y’know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well, I’ll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I’m good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like… like something’s missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn’t explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn’t sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?”

― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

As to that natural dejection which arises from a melancholic temperament, it belongs purely to the body, and is the province of the physician. It is true that it is constantly recurring, but let it be borne in peace, as we receive from his hands a fever or any other bodily ailment.

The question is not, what is the state of our feelings, but what is the condition of our will. Let us will to have what is the condition of our will. Let us will to have whatever we have, and not to have whatever we have not.

—François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress

THE weather shifts from cloudy to clear and then back to rain: thus it is with human nature. One must always expect clouds to hide the sun sometimes. Even the saints have had their dark hours, days and weeks. They say then that “God has left them” in order that they may know truly how utterly wretched they are of themselves, without His support. These times of darkness, when all seems meaningless, ridiculous and vain, when one is beset by doubt and temptations, are inevitable. But even these times can be harvested for good.

The dark days can best be conquered by following the example of St. Mary of Egypt. For forty-eight years she dwelt in the desert beyond Jordan, and when temptations befell her and memories of her former sinful life in Alexandria beckoned her to leave her voluntary sojourn in the desert, she lay on the ground, cried to God for help and did not get up until her heart was humbled. The first years were hard; she sometimes had to lie this way for many days; but after seventeen years came the time of rest.

On such days stay quiet. Do not be persuaded to go out into social life or entertainment. Do not pity yourself, seek comfort in nothing but your cry to the Lord: Haste thee, O God, to deliver me! Make haste to help me, O Lord (Psalm 70:1)! I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth (Psalm 88:8), and other such appeals. You cannot expect real help from any other source. For the sake of chance relief do not throw away all your winnings. Pull the covers over your head: now your patience and steadfastness are being tried. If you endure the trial, thank God who gave you the strength. If you do not, rise up promptly, pray for mercy and think: I got what I deserved! For the fall itself was your punishment. You had relied too much on yourself, and now you see what it led to. You have had an experience; do not forget to give thanks.

Way of the Ascetics
Tito Colliander

i was afraid to actually live because the fear of something happening to make me unhappy was greater than the desire to actually try to be happy

source

People feel unhappy and they don’t know why. They feel that something is wrong, but they can’t put their finger on what. They feel uneasy in the world, confused and frustrated, alienated and estranged, and they can’t explain it. They have everything and yet they want more. And when they get it, they are still left empty and dissatisfied. They want happiness and peace, and nothing seems to bring it. They want fulfillment, and it never seems to come. Everything is fine, and yet everything is wrong. In America this is almost a national disease. It is covered over by frantic activity and endless running around. It is buried in activities and events. It is drowned out by television programs and games. But when the movement stops and the dial is turned off and everything is quiet …then the dread sets in, and the meaninglessness of it all, and the boredom, and the fear. Why is this so? Because, the Church tells us, we are really not at home. We are in exile. We are alienated and estranged from our true country. We are not with God our Father in the land of the living. We are spiritually sick. And some of us are already dead.

Our hearts are made for God, St. Augustine has said, and we will be forever restless until we rest in Him. Our lives are made for God, and we will be unfulfilled and dissatisfied and frustrated until we go to Him. All of God’s creatures, as Francis Thompson said in his poem The Hound of Heaven, are His “loyal betrayers.” They do not satisfy His children and cannot bring them peace. He alone can do that, because He alone is our home. And we are His.

The Lenten Spring
Thomas Hopko

“When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. […] I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and of the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness.”

—Albert Camus