When I was younger, I lived life to the extreme and for the extremes. I had no overarching purpose, so I assumed one from the abundant possibilities of my anxious lifestyle. I quickly moved from one place to another, one girl to another, one job to another. I was on the fast track to the ultimate equalizer of extreme nothingness—death.
But then in the summer of 1998, I surrendered my bitter nothingness into the hands that had resuscitated nothingness to breathe in the sweet air of spiritual becoming. I became a follower of Jesus Christ. My overarching purpose in life changed—no longer to glorify and pleasure myself but to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.[1] This was a qualitative improvement from before. But my life was still operating at neck-break speed. Instead of redlining my hedonistic rpms, I was now revving the throttle of a new venture—Christian apologetics.
Apologetics was accompanied by systematic theology and philosophy of religion and ethics. A decade of rigorous studying and research monopolized my time until, until my mainframe was fried. My thyroid took a hit and with it so did my financial and scholastic investments. My PhD track was completely derailed and I was left emotionally devastated. I could no longer operate from my own self-awareness and metacognition. And no amount of willpower to shrug off my nervous breakdown would suffice. I needed time to reset. And that’s what I did. Over the span of several years, I had to slowly and subtly approach my dreams of writing, publishing and educating others.
As I ponder my goals, setbacks and struggles over the course of several decades, I see a dramatic shift from needing extreme experiences to add value to my life to pondering the subtleties that most people take for granted. These nuances have refined my thinking and fostered intellectual and personal meaning. This is where I live now. I’m no longer interested in getting somewhere as fast as possible although, ironically, I could be justified in exactly that, since the clock is ticking.
I’m not necessarily endorsing the sentimental campaign of “slow down and smell the roses” because a major subtly like that, which is just another form of extremism, is wishful thinking. Only spiritual resuscitation can align someone with a life of purpose that’s best expressed in subtle yet deliberate whispers of hope from previous groans of despair.
[1] See the first tenet of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.