Duty

Do you ever get one of those times when you've received so many orders and duties at work you just want to relax at home on a weekend and not do anything at all? I guess it happens to everyone. You serve others so much at work you just want to be served on your off days. You don't want to think about anything even moderately stressful; you don't want to hear the word "duty"; you don't want to do anything for anyone. In short you just want to be left alone. I get that feeling all the time. I think ever since I enlisted I've developed a variation of the victim mentality, that since I do so much shit work (pardon my language) for others throughout the week I demand the best service and pleasure during the weekends. And I get angry whenever my time is wasted during the weekends.

I'll be frank about what started me on this rant. (I rant a lot these days don't I? But what's the point of this blog if not to allow me to purge my frustration?) I was asked to "serve" by doing games for cell group this Saturday. It seriously is not the fault of the person who asked me. It was an instinctive response on my part to shirk away from all responsibility on a weekend, on a day when I feel I should be served, not cracking my brain about how to keep 20 people entertained with some banal game. I know I sound horribly self-centred. But I can't deny the fact that I was irked. I was irked that I was asked to perform a duty for the cell on the first Saturday I'm able to attend after two consecutive weeks of weekend duties. To add insult to injury, I was asked about this yesterday, during my duty in yard.

Her exact words were, "Would you like to serve?" I wonder why she phrased it like that. That was what got to me. Usually people just ask, "Hey, can you do games this sat..." But this was different. And when longsuffering me replied in the affirmative, albeit with a very reluctant tone, her response was this, "Be joyful! It's serving the Lord too! :)"

I don't know, but at that moment I was tempted to reply that certain people believe that blowing themselves up in the middle of a crowd is service to God too. Well, I didn't say that, but her obliviously joyous tone was grating to my heavy spirit.

If I force myself to look at the situation objectively, and in a Christian spirit, then yes, I reluctantly have to say that doing games is a service to God, for whoever serves these little ones serves Him as well, no matter how mind numbingly boring the act may be. And yes, I know I shouldn't let circumstances dictate my happiness. Joy is an act of the will, the decision to rejoice in spite of one's circumstances, and to pray the God will supply the happy feelings. Well then, God help me find a banal game to entertain 20 people this weekend.

Materialism

These days when I sit before the monitor trying to blog I am always struck by a sense of emptiness, as though there's nothing worth saying here. Why do I bother blogging? This is not a private journal, and yet I feel the urge the pour out my deepest, darkest troubles onto the world. Isn't that sheer exhibitionism? Yet I take some comfort in the fact that no one reads my blog anymore, so there is a measure of privacy, even if I'm just trying to delude myself.

What to say though? I just feel empty and shallow these days. I've felt this way before, years back in school. It's the feeling I get when I realise my happiness depends on nothing more than the material, like the next time I book out, or my next meeting with friends, shopping, eating, watching a movie. I enjoy all these things, but nowadays I sense they've gotten too much of a hold on me, to the extent that I wonder sometimes about the day I finally ORD. When all this trouble, the thorn in my neck for two years, is gone, will I just feel empty and rootless? Because as of now, NS provides a counterpoint to my material happiness, the black to my white. How then will I know beauty if I live on a bed of roses? At such a point I usually convince myself that the gloom that's descended on me is linked much closer to NS than just my shallow materialism, and that my ORD will not see a dying out of euphoria a few days after it.

And yet I cannot ignore what I just called my shallow materialism. Shallow, ha. To think I would call myself that. Maybe not exactly shallow. Materialistic more like it. Shallowness would imply an inability to see the emptiness, an inability to notice the deep end a few metres beyond the bathing pool. But how? How to shake this off? It's linked, I know deep down it is, to my increasing detachment from the spiritual life. And what plagues me most is my inertia, my sheer laziness to get up and do something about it. Writing does not help in practical action here. Maybe writing clarifies things, brings thought into focus, but it certainly does not dispel sloth. Prayer? You know alot of times I feel my prayers are mere words without actions, a temporary balm to appease a vengeful deity. Completely erroneous of me I know, but these are the sort of thought errors I am liable to fall into without rigorous correction time and time again. My God is both Saviour and Lord, the Righteous Judge who also stands as my Advocate in heaven. I need to bring back that balance in my life. And yet words without thoughts never to heaven go.