What I want

At many stages of my life I have thought to myself ‘what do I want in life?’ This is one of those questions that is rarely answered well because the answer changes a little too often. At one point in my life all I wanted was to build Voltron, that is a Japanese cartoon that was popular when I was growing up. I would imagine going into the “dump”, and I use that word loosely, behind our home back then and finding pieces of metal and wood and using my father’s tools making the enormous robot. I would start with the foot at the side of the house, come back from school the next day and keep working on it till it was done. And that was my dream, I wanted to build Voltron. As I grew up the dream changed, the dream changed…

That's Voltron, a couple lego parts would have made the dream a little easier

At different times of my life it has been different things. To be a sportsman, to be my Dad, to live a life of quite isolation and seclusion with books, to live with my friends each growing and helping each other along. But all these dreams are fleeting and they change so often. At the end of the day it is a quest for happiness, one that has us looking to the future for an ideal scenario that has us happy. Our vision of the future is just that, it is a painting of what a happy future looks like. For a while recently it was me as an Architect, coming home to a wife and six kids, three my own and three adopted. Funny enough that is almost my Dad.

But the reality that always hits me and I bet it hits you too is that the picture changes because the level of happiness that we want is not found here. It is not found in life, and no this is not a mass suicide piece. The truth is the one thing that supersedes happiness is peace. You see the reason why we are always looking for that new dream and scrapping the old one, chasing after that new high is not just for the happiness factor but it’s because of the restlessness that is in us. That thing in us that keeps telling us that this is it.

Restlessness is what keeps us searching after a new high. Whatever that high maybe to each one of us. Restlessness is what keeps us flicking through channel after channel on TV looking for something because the previous show was not enough. Restlessness is that thing that has us wake up the day after our sports team wins it all think ‘okay, what’s next?’ It’s all that but it’s even more. Restlessness is the cause of our woe and laziness. It is our supposed lack of ambition in many parts of life because we try to fight off that restlessness inside us but even that doesn’t work because it drives us into other avenues to scratch the itch.

The annoying feeling no one can shake

I know that itch very well. I know it from the times I have been in the zone with my work, ready to do the best work I have ever done. Gone all day and all night getting that one idea properly represented on paper, listening to the right music and thinking the right thoughts, hand moving in perfect harmony with my brain, body moving with the grace of a ballerina to the sweetest of orchestra music and yet after the work is complete I feel the itch, ever there.. Ever there…

The good news is that I have known peace. It is a very good feeling I tell you, not just the feeling of happiness but peace. I remember the first time it hit me was late August 2004. It was one of those days when under normal circumstances I would have been running to the TV for my next batch of entertainment, it was a Sunday you see and like all football fans know, Sunday night means football. But this time my interest was more on what I had heard at church that day and I enjoyed thinking it over, I remember going back to my room and having one of those conversations with my brother that usually result in the arguments of two highly opinionated young lads with the genes of Conrad and Felistas Mbewe but this time, I saw no need to go down that road. The argument would not scratch the itch because, there was no itch.

That was not my exact thought word for word, well thought wise anyway but you get the picture but that was it. I remember going to see my Dad and interrupting a conversation between him and my mum and we stepped into his study and I told him “Dad I think I have become a Christian”. I remember that because the words just came out, I had not planned it on the way there but there it was. He asked me why and I gave him the full version of events that happened before. I’m pretty sure I did a whole blog about that so I wont go into that now. He told me to pray and think over it over the next coming days and we would talk about it again.

Granted you are not likely to find me in that position at for my quite time
but I do like the idea of that prayer every morning

I remember that time because that was the first time I noticed the change in my life. Now I am not saying that my itch is gone completely in that there is still that desire in me to search for peace elsewhere but now I know not just where the peace is found but that the peace found me. I know where to go for that joy and comfort. I know that none can satisfy like he can. Not my career to be, not books that I enjoy to read, video games that I enjoy playing, friends I enjoy hanging around or even the woman who I might marry. The source of my peace is there with God and l need to make all my efforts in life have meaning is in him.

What I want is that peace to continue with me, what I want is to never forget that peace. What I want is to return to that moment again and again and again. What I want is to echo with David, ‘Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and renew a right spirit with me’. What I want is that.. simply that