While you live searching for meaning, there is this one guy (representative of the many probably) in the world whose wasting his time and millions in selfish, self-serving pursuits, offending people with his very lifestyle and not caring a whit.
I used to find Dan Bilzerian fascinating. His very lifestyle appealed to the rebellious, dark streak I had - the side that read erotic romance novels. He was the epitome of the heroes I met (except for the I-don’t-care-attitude) in those paranormal romance novels (I kept imagining him in place of Dragos, the dragon tycoon, yes, dragon, from Thea Harrison’s novel, Dragon Bound).
I know Dragos and his ilk do not exist in real life. But since my imagination is poor, while reading Dragon Bound, I kept putting Dan Bilzerian in his place… and the heroine? I had the image of someone like that girl from Tekken ( I know I need to brush up on my imagination and pay attention to details when reading and no, I am not one of those girl who imagine myself in place of the heroines, I don’t have the guts. The heroes and heroines just become my friends and well, I haven’t read much novels with fat heroines in them, so I really, really can’t imagine away).
I keep thinking how lucky he is to have that much money to waste away while I turn over all my earnings to send my younger siblings to school. I even have to scrape the meager amount of money I have left to photocopy learning materials for my learners and yeah, still have some left for my favorite street food, at the end of the day. Every lunchtime I go home to feed our pets and spend time with our cat and her kittens, I keep thinking that if I had his money, I would build a home conducive to pets where I can let them loose and they can play their hearts away and I would not have to worry that they might slip outside and get run over by vehicles.
I find myself wondering why he is doing what he is doing. And then I would ask why am I doing what I am doing? What do I do? I wake up late (because I read late into the night trying to escape my problems and reality), rush to our Community Learning Center and conduct learning sessions with my out-of-school youth learners, and buy squid balls and japanese siomai after class to make myself feel better. Then, I would go home and feed the cats and dogs. Go back to work on session plans, learning materials, and sometimes, work on reports requested by our supervisor and paper stuff requested by the City or hold tutorial sessions. Then, before my family comes home from work or school (I still live with my family), I have to clean up the house, wash the dishes and make sure everything's okay. Then I would go up to my room to sleep or read or just putter around, trying to run away from the frustration that this is not the life I want to live. By Saturday, I would waste an entire day reading away, escaping. On Sunday, I would force myself to go to Mass and attend the Singles for Christ’s prayer meetings and activities. Then, we would repeat everything else on Monday. I do things out of routine and responsibility.
And then, I find myself online staring at amazing, titillating photos that Dan Bilzerian would post on his twitter account and think, wow, what a waste. Waste of resources, waste of time (time especially), waste of human life, created in God’s image and doing things it is not supposed to do… and he does not care at all!
Am I bitter? Am I jealous? Did his lifestyle made mine pale in comparison? Here’s a man doing what he wants for himself and here I am doing what others want me to do. What is the difference? Both lives are still a waste. I do things selflessly, it may appear, but deep inside, I feel bitter, joyless. I just keep doing it for appearances sake, for responsibility’s sake, which is not how life was meant to be.I try to escape the pain of living for others by reading and eating too much. Sometimes, I also sleep too much because I know, deep inside, I am wasting my life.
There’s nothing wrong with doing things for other people but doing so because you feel guilty, or because you can’t say no for fear of offending them and then feel bad about everything you had to do is the wrong thing. Trying to escape that situation by reading, eating and sleeping my life away is also the wrong things.
Passion is the answer. A passion for life, for God, for His people. A love for them moving inside your soul, extending from within you, making your limbs move to serve, out of love, out of joy, out of concern, not out of routine and responsibility.This one is healthy.
What should I live for? I have no final answer or answers for this question but in the meantime, I have these:
1. I live for my family
I live for my brothers and sisters and my parents…to provide them with a better way of life than what they could have without me.
2. I live for my learners
I live to encourage and inspire them to be the best self that they can become even at those points when no one would want to believe in them
3. I live for my Father in Heaven
God loves me so much that He made me. It was His love that enabled me to be alive and it is this love that I hold on for living. I may stumble and fall, I may sometimes get lost in this journey, but I live with the clear awareness and knowledge that I am journeying towards something and that is Him.
4. I live for His people
God loves His people. He created man out of the enormity of that love. In our Christian Life Program, I learned that the ten commandments are summarized into two: (1) Love God with all your heart, soul and strength and (2) Love your neighbor as you love yourself. It is important for us to love ourselves too because that is the measurement of the kind of love we can give another person, our neighbor, the person in need that we encounter in our lives.
Back to Dan Bilzerian. Who am I to judge his life or lifestyle? Who are we indeed? I believe that eventually, all of us will answer to Someone, and that Someone has already told us what He wanted from us right from the start. It’s up to us to use what He has given us. But we would eventually answer to Him, in the end.
But to the judgmental side of ourselves who wants to decide on the time and place of reckoning ourselves, here’s a timely reminder:
Yep. And I thank the Lord for that timely reminder too.
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