Spiritual Development
Coming Home
Coming Home
Living in New York, Cynthia Heimel was a writer, author and playwright. She knew many struggling actors and actresses who worked in restaurants or drove taxis to pay their bills. Until they became famous.
Cynthia observed that when they were struggling like the rest of us, they said, “If only I could make it in the business, if only I had this or that, I’d be happy.” They were like so many other people: stressed, driven, easily upset. But when they actually got the fame they had been longing for, they became insufferable; unstable, angry and manic.
She said they were worse than arrogant, they were unhappier than they used to be!
She wrote; ‘I pity celebrities. They were once perfectly pleasant human beings…but now their wrath is awful…more than anyone they wanted fame. They worked, they pushed and the morning after each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose…because that giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfilment and happiness, had happened. And nothing changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.’
Heimel’s final statement is intriguing. “I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants your deepest wish.”
Personally, I don’t think God is into rotten practical jokes, but Cynthia has a point. Too often, when people get their deepest wish they discover it’s not enough. The enjoyment of financial, business, sporting or even relationship success doesn’t last as long as they anticipated.
I’m the first to applaud anyone following a good dream. I’m at the finish line offering congratulations. But I know even the finest accomplishment is not enough.
The roots of the discontent of the human heart go deep.
We all need an echo of the experience of Jewel, the Unicorn who at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia exclaims; “I’ve come home at last! This is my real country…This is the land I’ve been looking for all my life.”
I had a Jewel like experience when I was 19. I was at the beach.
Many have this kind of experience when they first attend a healthy church. “I just feel like I’ve come home,” they often say, their eyes glistening.
