Lately I've been wondering: What makes us so restless? So restless that we go searching, searching, searching, pursuing what will scratch our itch, feel satisfied, and let us rest at last?
St. Augustine is not everyone's favorite these days, just as he wasn't in his own day in North Africa. People tehn and now take him to task for his denial of free will, his association of lust and sin, coupling of sex and original sin, his suspiciousness almost fear of beauty. The list of his "sins" against our enlightened minds is practically endless. But beyond all the Neo-Platonic-inspired Chrisitan resolutions he discovered for his restlessness, this Augustine still knew a thing or two about seeking God and losing the way. He was a true mystic, one whose journey teaches us more perhaps than his arriving, as it does with all mystics, seekers; for true seekers never arrive--they arrive only to set off again. Augustine the passionate seeker, in his spiritual autobiograrphy, Confessions, wrote this: "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."
Look around you. Look at yourself. Look within. What do you see? People desperately seeking something that will cure their restlessness. Work. Accomplishments. Fame. Acquiring money, things, connections, knowledge. Romantic relationships. Family obligations. Exercise. TV. Surfing the Internet. Video games. Food. Alcohol. Marijuana. Prescription painkillers. Heroin. Xanax. They feel that restlessness inside, that urge that they can't ever quite quiet, the urge to get up and do soemthing, seek something, find something,something,anything, that will let them rest.
The restlessness, the urging toward something we know not what, is good. That is the human condition. It is our willingness to settle too quickly for that which cannot truly satisfy that urging that trips us up time and again. Our eagerness to believe that what is finite can soothe our restless hearts yearning for the infinite. So we go seeking and finding, seeking and finding, while our restlessness only grows and begins to tear at our spirits, tear us apart, which drives us to seek more desperately.
What can we do? Being born restless and needing to seek? Sit still and ask oursaelves if what we have found, what we are still looking for, still chasing, can cure that restlessness or if it will only exacerbate it and drive us to disappointment and despair?
Seeking is good; it is what we are meant for. But be careful of what you find. Far better to be found than to find.
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