WHAT DO YOU WANT?
“Why do we spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?”
These two questions from Merton’s No Man is an Island, can radically rattle our present foundation and potentially cause a seismic shift, turning our life upside down, changing it forever. Have you ever asked:
- “What am I made for?”
- “What is my real calling in life?”
To get closer to a life-giving answer, you may also want to ask:
- In your wildest dreams, if you could do anything you can imagine, what would it be, and why?
In the gospels Jesus simply, yet challengingly asks people “What do you want me to do for you?” This is the most frequently asked question of Jesus (Matthew 20:32; Mark 10:36 and 10:51; Luke 18:41) and also, I believe, the most beautiful. It is all about confidently naming our discerned, deepest desire.
Quote: Thomas Merton,
No Man is an Island, page 126
Word Art : Philip Chircop SJ
