Pardon My Introspection...

I just finished my first 2 days of seminary classes.  I feel...predictably let down.

Don't get me wrong.  I actually enjoyed the classes, and it's been great reconnecting with old friends, making new friends, etc.  What you need to understand is that I've been looking forward to this day for about 14 years, and seldom do things live up to that kind of anticipation.  I knew I was going to feel this way.

A quote from Kierkegaard that has stuck with me for years is: "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.  And what wine is so foaming, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!"  What he is saying is that when things are still in the future, still just in the realm of the possible, then we imagine them to be maximally satisfying.  Once we experience them, even though they are pleasant, they inevitably fail to match the joy we imagined.

So I had some great classes- thoroughly enjoyable.  I'm glad I'm here, I'm thankful to be here, and I am genuinely looking forward to my studies themselves, not just as a means to an end.  But at the end of the day I felt like saying "was that it?"  It's a human tendency to put unreasonable expectations on the people and events and experiences of our life- expectations we borrow from an imagined reality.  Expectations fueled by movies and books and other narratives that describe only the Possible, not the Actual.  And so our marriages, our jobs, our friendships, our lives feel so common when measured against the Possible.  We feel let down or even disappointed because they're not as amazing or as perfect as we imagine they could be.  

Imagination is a great gift, but it is also our greatest liability.  And it is the greatest enemy to our contentment.  And without contentment there is no happiness.

So today I think about the promise that there is a Day coming that cannot possibly disappoint.  A Day that is not worth comparing to anything in our present experience.  A Day that far exceeds all that we could ever ask or imagine.