We had recently moved to Vienna, and I needed a haircut. My German language skills were infantile, at best. But I was desperate enough to take my life—or at least my hair—into my own hands.
Knowing I probably could not communicate effectively with a hairdresser, I drew a picture of what I wanted the finished product to look like. I struck out in the city, found a Friseur and hoped for the best. The hairdresser did not speak German or English. He spoke French. That didn’t help. But I had my drawing, which I gave him.
I know about hairdressers. They like to do what they like to do. He cut and snipped away, speaking French to no avail.
When he had finished, the mirror reflected a haircut which did not look at all like my drawing. I paid (dearly) and left. What else could I do? I could not protest, and more cutting would have left me shorn.
We were living at the time with colleagues, as we had not yet located a rentable house for ourselves and our year-old daughter.
When I walked in the door of our teammates’ home, the husband of the couple took one look and said, “Is that the way you wanted it?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I didn’t laugh.
The question, on his part, was probably intended merely for information: was I pleased with the result I’d gone at lengths to risk? I didn’t have the courage at the time to find out from him what I was assuming, that he agreed it was a horrible haircut.
But his question became a sort of trenchant motto for me, with the obvious, implied answer to an undesirable or negative circumstance: no, that’s not at all the way I wanted it.
There have been other, and much graver, circumstances through the years. (There will always be others.) Notices of them come almost daily. Some are personal and bring with them personal pain. Some are the way the world is. And—no—the world is not the way I wanted it. Not the way I have to meet it when I get those notices or walk out my door. Not the way I want my grandchildren to have to grow up in it.
When life is not the way I want it—and is not likely to change for the better soon—how should I live it?
I correspond with young Ukrainians who meet the horrors of the world daily: one, conscripted into the military; another, who is awakened by sirens several times nightly warning her to get to a safe place—if there is one. Neither would have chosen this kind of life. But this is how they are spending the years of their youth. Is this the way they wanted it?
G.K. Chesterton, the very candid, insightful, and often humorous early twentieth-century British author, noticed, in his own life struggles, a fundamental principle: the universe was not the way he wanted it. He found it at times hostile and at times overwhelming, both in its beauty and what he called its “monstrousness.” How was he to live in it the way it was?
Chesterton’s search led him to the Bible. There, he eventually made a dubiously comforting discovery: he found out that he was in the wrong place. This world, he discovered, is not the way it was meant to be.
We were made, writes Chesterton, to inhabit another world. God had made this world the way He wanted it—and placed in it knowledge and meaning for the flourishing of His creatures, including humankind. But humans decided to make it of their own choosing, blurring His image and distorting His meaning. Consequently—and who has not felt this? —we are never satisfied with the world the way it is. We find ourselves at odds with this one. Life just so often does not meet our expectations. We try to fix it, but, like my hair after the disastrous cut, it is not fixable.
Chesterton had been homesick for that knowledge. “I knew now,” he wrote, “…why I could feel homesick at home—” i
While the universe would never be the way he wanted it, Chesterton could search out and find God’s meaning everywhere and live his life exploring that meaning and purpose manifested in himself and others. In a universe infused with God’s meaning, Chesterton could write: “It is my Father’s house.” Finding his purpose in his Father’s house, he could now have joy, even when it was mixed, at times, with bafflement—as when he was homesick for that other world, that future world where God, not monstrous humans, reigns.
How do my Ukrainian friends live their lives the way they must live them right now?
By living them with purpose.
One of them sees his purpose as sharing God’s meaning with his fellow soldiers, bringing them the hope of that future world.
One of them says, “My youth is filled with good and really hard moments at the same time. Nevertheless, [I am] grateful to God for having good in my youth.” ii She is—amazingly and intentionally—grateful.
I find purpose and gratitude are key to living in the world the way it is, with joy. Yes, my purpose is sometimes thwarted—or so it appears to me at times. But if I am living in my Father’s house, He has a way of bringing His purposes to bear, despite my bafflement. And when I can be consciously grateful for the good—and there is much good in my life—I can relegate the distresses and disappointments to what I believe to be His overarching purpose, in some way, for me and those I love.
Living in this world the way it is should make us “homesick” for that other, future, world.
And that other world—which we were made to inhabit—will be just the way we wanted it.
i G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
ii From L., 16 September, 2024
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