Seeking black and white answers

I wonder what I would be like if I were more disciplined, instead of so scattered much of the time. I guess in my own way I am focused, yet I seem to lack a certain ambition that I often see in others. The things I do wish to work towards, even then I am often lackadaisical about it. Allowing my moods to dictate how I will spend my time and energy. So I often find myself tired and listless, not wanting to do anything. Funny, I am always happier when I am more focused, yet something in me fights it, seems to want chaos, lack of order and direction. It is so irrational and I see no end to this in sight.

Some people seem able to hunker down and do what is necessary. While it is true that I get done what is needed in the moment, it is the long range issues that I have trouble with. I suppose my main love is to simply read, think, daydream and yes, now to write. Yet even then I wonder if it is all real, if my musings are just so much bull shit, words that tumble out without me having to really ponder over them. Perhaps under the words, there is only void and chaos, my words a smoke screen covering my essential nothingness.

I know that even though I am a man of faith, there is something of the nihilist in me, where I wonder, if when you tear apart the floor of reality, there is perhaps nothing underneath. Now this is a fear I had has a child. Something without a bottom, like falling into a bottomless well into eternal darkness, without any ending, just falling, never hitting bottom; a real terror for me as a child and yes perhaps even now. For that child still lives in me, the one of faith and the other, fearful of the absurdity of life, if in fact there is only nothingness.

I sometimes think the so called cosmic battle is really fought in the human heart, one at a time, an intense struggle that we each participate in, even if the depth of struggle is often unknown, unfelt or even believed in. Well believe me, there is an inner struggle, and since I think I am pretty normal, I doubt that it is something unique. It is as if the battle is about where I will place my freedom. In an ever expanding universe of faith and hope, or the ever diminishing one of despair and absurdity; I seemed to have chosen faith. Both are at odds, yet both are choices, why we make the choices we do I have no idea, though I think grace is in there somewhere, are everywhere, just unseen.

The two camps can't communicate very well, in fact contempt can be shown from both sides, so the crevice between the two world views widens, and the fringe in both armies become more and more fanatical in their pronouncements. Contempt in time leads to violence; with each side having a plenitude of reasons for the evils that they commit against one another. History is full of such examples and I think it foolish to think it will not continue. Perhaps we are trapped in this never ending dance.

Is this about the struggle between good and evil? I don't know, since there seems to be both in the believers and unbelievers camp. Perhaps the struggle is deeper and like I said played out in the deepest inner sanctum of each heart. I would suppose discipline is needed to knowingly choose either side.

We so seek clear black and white answers, yet at this level of reality perhaps that is not possible, since we can all hide much of our true natures from one another and even I guess, from ourselves. Until one day, the inner demon erupts, or perhaps the inner light. The chaos of life and its extremes can bring us face to face with who we are, is perhaps the bloody inward struggle we all go through, in order to finally end up in one camp or another. Perhaps I should say, we choose one camp or the other.

Where is grace? It is there working everywhere, just hidden, the same way our inner lives are hidden from one another. Perhaps life is a lot more serious than most of us think, that what we think, do, our small choices, have greater importance than we would ever imagine.

So know I am not saying those people are evil, and these are good. The deepest heart is not for any of us to judge, like St. Paul said: "I can't even judge myself. Yet there is hope, not certainty, faith and hope go together, in the end it is charity that last.