We all know it doesn't work that way. It would be great if all my problems could be magically solved with some fancy cheese and the right pair of shoes, but...having consumed a lot of string cheese and walked right through a whole bunch of flip-flops, I'm still waiting for that magic moment.
So what now? What do I do to make the world better, to make myself better, to get even a tiny itty bitty fraction closer to whatever it is that we're supposed to be striving for?
Step one, I've found, is realizing that it's never gonna be instant. You'll fail, a LOT. You're gonna let people you love down, you're gonna let yourself down, the community that's supposed to love you and walk with you is gonna let you down too. Because oh hey, we're all just ridiculous meat people trying to figure out this giant cosmic mess. It's a pretty big thing to be trying to do while also making sure the kids are dressed and the cat's fed and oh hey did someone drink the last of the milk again?
The best part about this, for my Baha'i self, is that it's....kinda expected I'm gonna suck at stuff sometimes. Why else do we have loving Writings that tell us stuff like "Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday."? Sure, fine, today sucked, you messed up, you tripped and fell on your face, but...hey, guess what, tomorrow is a brand new day. You can try again.
I think that's something we forget a lot, this sort of kindness. Obeying the rules (whatever they are to you and however they look) isn't easy. If it was easy, we'd not need them written down and laid out for us. There are "rules" of the Baha'i Faith that I know are a struggle for me. Like Baha'u'llah's reminder to " let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path". Some days I don't want to be loving and kind! I want to be angry and stompy and knock over buildings like Godzilla. But He knows that, and He's made room for it, as long as I pick myself up, dust myself off and keep walking the path He's set for me.
Maybe we gotta do that for ourselves, too. It's so easy to compare ourselves to our family or friends or that stranger down the street who REALLY seems to have it all together. It's easy to think they've got it all sorted, that they're following all the rules and they're not spilling spaghetti down their shirt and ending up with mismatched socks. But maybe their yesterday sucked, and we're just seeing them in their much better morn. Even if we aren't, even if we are seeing them in their default state and we don't feel like we could ever measure up, we owe it to ourselves to remember that in the end, that's not what we're here for! We're here for such a short time, and we have so much to do and to learn and so many ways to grow and so many tiny little miracles to experience.
It's good to know what the rules are, what we're seeking to achieve. But it's also good, I think, to acknowledge that knowing and doing are vastly different things. After all, we're told "let deeds, not words, be your adorning," for a dang good reason I think. Words are easy, doing's the tricky part, and to keep doing and keep trying even when we have scraped our knees for the hundredth time (I have the scars to prove it, I can show you)? That's where the real love is.
That's the answer, I think. Find the love that drives you. For me, it's the love of God and Baha'u'llah, for you it might be something else entirely. But it's in there. Love yourself enough to keep trying, to keep doing the things out of that love that drives your very soul, and that's what obedience really looks like.
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