The Heart's Desire

Everyday is a day to decide on something, and every moment you feel like you need to figure out what to do next. I think about it all the time, such as "When should I wake up?" or "When should I begin studying.." and "Do I even have time to hang out with my friends?" I'm not incredibly materialistic and have stayed away from trying to be one. But I am still a female who would like to dress better, look nicer, and be more confident. This is all the exterior portion of what I want for myself. But I've always been a junkie on buying different types of books--mostly because I wanted to read and learn about new and different things. Yet, my desire is one thing, but taking on the accumulation of books over the years and not reading them is really a waste of money.

I've never been particularly good with handling money in general. I don't work, and I've never worked. This means that I have no idea what it is like to work for money. I only volunteered, so have at least a clue what working with people can sometimes feel like. Yet, I guess that is not entirely the same. The real world can be cruel and extremely demanding. The things that I've thought about seems to be nothing in comparison to people who are living "real life" as you may call it. They have to know when to spend and when not to so that they won't have to suffer on their own account their misuse of handling money.

Financial issues have been a great problem for many Americans and every soul on this planet. The core of the problem lies in the heart and its desires. As human beings, we often can be selfish and would want everything for ourselves. We could try to make the excuse and impression that we are really doing it for the well-being of others, but mainly it's never the case. Once the money is in your pocket, it's really yours to use it in any way that you want.

But do you know the weight of having or carrying with you a sense of power? When I say power, it is when you believe that you can do anything that you want--with what you want--because you have the resources to do so. For example, I may not think of money in that way, but I go to a college where people are given lottery numbers for living on campus. Essentially, there are too many college students who would like to live on campus and the best way to be fair to all of them is to give them a a lottery number. Surprisingly, this year, I got a wonderfully low number. A 62!! Yes! Great! Okay....what do I do with it now? I have the power to choose wherever it is that I want to live and it should be easy, right? WRONG. I spent hours laboring over whether I should live in a singles, a double, in an apartment or stay with the people that I am currently living with now. You would think that when you have such a great chance at being ahead of everyone that things would get easier from there, but I found out that it only became more difficult. I wasn't the only one who felt that way, because I recently heard (like literally on Thursday night when I went out with a group of friends) that some other person with a good number didn't have a place to live for next year even though he has an exceptionally good number. In one night, I got to hear another person describe to me about her sophomore year and how she practically had the right to choose; she thought she wanted a singles (just like I did before) but she ending up waiting until the very last minute where the number could no longer save her a spot on campus. Her next reaction to this was to freak out because she just couldn't figure out what to do next. Luckily, she had friends who told her to contact another person who found her a living space.

If you could take anything out of this is to not take on anything more than you can handle. I'm especially indecisive so knowing what I would like to do next can sometimes be a pain. It makes me go the three extra miles just to reach a place where it might take others only 20 minutes. There's so much mental conflict that I have to endure in between the distance from my starting point to the point of my destination. A lot can happen, as you might very well be aware of.

I want to go back to the part where I began to discuss the topic of financial needs. I was listening to a speaker, who is a pastor but had studied economics during his college years as a student, talk about the problems that many Americans undergo. Experiences and data have concluded that the average Americans suffer a debt of $10,000. I think....that's quite a large sum of money...wouldn't you agree, especially for a person who is unemployed? There is a heavy sense of weight of paying people back that you would have to carry when you are in debt and it only becomes worse when there are criticisms that you get that you would receive wherever you go just because people no longer see you as a worthy, respectable citizen. But should we not respect people who are worse off than us? ....Then again, why do that? It is most likely that these things could happen to anyone. Like for me, I didn't think that I could ever get such a low and awesome "lottery" number, but look how fate has turned out for me. You never know. Besides, if you haven't left the college world or the safety of your own home, then I guess you'll have to wait and see what the truth will be like out there on your own.

There are so many unemployed people out there. It saddens me, because I hate to hear that the children are suffering because their moms are out of work, or that there is job discrimination.

America, the best and richest country in the world still consists of a population whose people face the consequences of being near or under the poverty line. That's crazy and absolutely insane if you think about it. Why is there such a great gap between the rich and the poor? Because...people are selfish. People want power and they do misuse their power. Some people think that money is everything and that it is the way to happiness. I don't know for sure if it is the way but I do know that it is not everything. Money is paper; paper is neutral. It is us and our own destructive desires that place money as evil when things goes wrong for us, or (the other way around) the reason for when things become better for us. We forget that anything can happen. We forget how to give back. We think only of ourselves when we are facing either extremities--either when we're undergoing some pretty tough times or when we have a fantastic luck appearing wherever we go.

The pastor told me something else, and that is to make sure you have a clear understanding of your heart's desires because if you keep wanting and consuming unnecessary items, you will continue to feel unhappy; this is because you'll never believe that you will ever have enough. The Bible said that when you overly attribute all of your well-being and emotions and project it onto an object, which can be anything in particular, then you are idolizing it. For this part here, it makes me think about those who feel like they need to have cocaine or cigarettes in order to feel good, or "high"; but they're never satisfied once the feeling goes away...ever. These are more serious issues, but in reality the build up of anything are serious. Consider people who have credit cards, and how much they are likely to spend and gain debts because they want oh-so-very-much. Asking for too much from any one thing or person is never good. Sometimes you need to look back on your own motives and see for yourself where your heart's desire lies.

Nothing will ever be clear until you begin to question yourself and what you believe to be the truth. Don't turn away from past mistakes, but face them head on. It's incredibly difficult to admit and torture one's mind with, but if we don't ever make way to see our failures and give credibility to it then we'll never know which way to go next. I learned that I need help when I have too much to carry. I asked my friends, leaders, talked to my roommate, and also called my mom before I could figure out what I would decide to do next. Basically, if you're not sure, then it's okay for you to ask. It really is. No one knows everything. Just like we shouldn't use money as a steady form of protection for all things to come, we should start to find out what will truly protect us in the long run. I want to protect my heart, and to do that I have to seek out all of the dirt in which I've created for myself and to really spiritually clean my soul and mind.

Be loved as well as loving for every one of us have fallen on the same rocks before, and we know what it feels like.