I observed this today.
Happy childhoods = disillusioned lives.
I am not completely sure this is true. (This is a new thing for me – spouting out half-baked ideas. It’s generally frowned upon I know but I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t have everything figured out so the rest of the world might as well comes to terms with that too). Just in case the above equation doesn’t make sense to you, let me explain.
If you grow up and neither of your parents die young or they aren’t too mean to you and you live in a nice house and none of the kids you know really bully you and you get good grades and go to the college that you applied for and don’t think much about it if possible employers don’t call you back because you got that other job that you applied for which you wanted more anyway…if that all happened to you, you probably had a happy childhood. Then, if suddenly something (or a lot of things) start going wrong when you are 23, what are you supposed to do with that? For absolutely no apparent reason your happy childhood seems to fail you. Not only that, but everyone you’ve ever looked up to fails you too. Why? Because they failed to prepare you for how to deal with all of this bad stuff happening. I mean, at least they could’ve warned you or something. So there you have it. You are disillusioned.
Let me introduce you to a word that is like disillusionment on steroids: weltschmerz. First, let’s work on pronunciation. Do not say welt (as in the result of a stray golf ball). Say velt (as in belt with a v). Once you pronounce the w correctly, I know you will flourish the e in schmerz appropriately.
From the dictionary:
Weltschmerz |ˈvɛltˌ sh mɛɐ̯rts|
noun
a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness.
ORIGIN German, from Welt ‘world’ + Schmerz ‘pain.’
I just cancelled a flight I had booked to Florida. Florida, that far-off state that was annoying even from a distance because of swamps, mosquitoes, and the Hurricanes. Then I went there and it became even more annoying because of how each blade of grass at Disney is the same length. Then I went there again and none of that mattered because suddenly I had friends there. I even found myself wanting to be there with them. In Florida. Where bugs grow large and are never killed off by frost. And I was going to learn all this great stuff that would maybe help my friends in Mali. And now? Now my flight is cancelled.
Weltschmerz. It’s such a great word they didn’t bother to translate it. There’s nothing to translate it to. There isn’t an English equivalent that captures what this word captures. And it captures a lot – basically my life right now. I mean, my happy childhood has translated into a happy adulthood: job, bills paid, time to spend with good friends. But some of that world-weariness is wearing on me. Sometimes all I can do is sit in my open window and cry.
And yet in the midst of that God allows me to have fun with friends, laugh at jokes, feel high-spirited, enjoy beautiful weather, and learn from worthwhile conversations. I have to ask myself, was I ever promised more than that anyway?
I love the idea of that word – “world-weariness”. I think everyone feels that exact way at times. And what if I didn’t? Would I ever even long for my true home?
“World-weary”! Yes, but for how long? And Why? I’m glad God isn’t bothered by questions. Sometimes we can look back and have an “aha” moment and understand why; often we never know. I’ve just read Ps. 105 and God knew there would be a famine in Israel and in vs. 17 it states that he was sending a man before them–itimating that He would be providing for them.
Joseph, so loved by Jacob, was that man–a slave, bound with chains and tested by the LORD until the time was ready and he had proved himself. Then he became a ruler, a teacher of elders, a judge and a provider for his own family. Overnight “World-weary” changed to honor and blessing, and a lesson to us all to stay true to God and keep trusting Him in the “world-weary” times.