The Brothers Karamazov

This classic work is being offered as a free audiobook download until the end of 2009.

If you haven't read The Brothers Karamazov (or listened to it), you really should.

I think it's my all-time favorite novel!

Ramblings of Discontent (The Search Goes On...)

Yesterday we were in Dallas renewing Darina's Bulgarian passport. On the way back to Lubbock, we had lots of time to talk about our future. For a couple of years, I've been searching for exactly what I should do professionally. While searching & asking, thinking & waiting, there have been times when I've gotten discouraged.

Recently, I finished reading The Idiot, by Dostoevsky. Surprisingly, I didn't like it very much. There was a particular passage that hit me though.

The narrator is discussing different types of people--those who think they are clever and those who truly are. He muses that clever people are sometimes truly honest and good, but unsuccessful.

One of these luckless men...is the guardian angel of his family, maintains by his labour outsiders as well as his own kindred, and yet can never be at rest all of his life! The thought that he has so well fulfilled his duties is no comfort or consolation to him; on the contrary, it irritates him. 'This is what I've wasted all my life on,' he says; 'this is what has fettered me, hand and foot; this is what has hindered me from doing something great! Had it not been for this, I should certainly have discovered -- gunpowder or America, I don't know precisely what, but I would certainly have discovered it!' What is most characteristic of these gentlemen is that they can never find out for certain what it is they are destined to discover and what they are within an ace of discovering. But their sufferings, their longings for what was to be discovered, would have sufficed for a Columbus or a Galileo.

(Part IV, Chapter 1, page 433 in my version, emphasis mine)

It's not that I think I'm terribly clever or gifted. But I do feel unfulfilled. I don't think it's just pride that causes me to feel that I should be doing more. I know that God can use me for something great. I just lack faith that He will use me. Yet Satan does use this discontent to make me discount my here and now.

I've heard much about being content lately. I trust that God will use me as He chooses. (Self-contradictory much? Yes, I know.) Another passage from The Idiot may also have something to say to my situation:

You know it's a matter of a whole lifetime, an infinite multitude of ramifications hidden from us. The most skillful chess-player, the cleverest of them, can only look a few moves ahead; a French player who could reckon out ten moves ahead was written about as a marvel. How many moves there are in this, and how much that is unknown to us! In scattering the seed, scattering your 'charity,' your kind deeds, you are giving away, in one form or another, part of your personality, and taking into yourself part of another; you are in mutual communion with one another, a little more attention and you will be rewarded with the knowledge of the most unexpected discoveries...All your thoughts, all the seeds scattered by you, perhaps forgotten by you, will grow up and take form. He who has received them from you will hand them on to another. And how can you tell what part you may have in the future determination of the destinies of humanity?

(Part III, Chapter 6, p. 378)

(Of course this speech was delivered by a scoundrel who was contemplating suicide, but still...)

I certainly don't want this blog to lapse into a self-reflective journal. That's not my intent. I'm sure there are others who feel unfulfilled and are seeking direction as well. Perhaps I would feel better about my situation (and become more productive) if I would just spend less time watching TV and playing computer games. Who knows?

Lord, have mercy...