What do you want?

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episdoe “Once More, With Feeling,” Spike says to Buffy:  “The day you suss out what you do want, there’ll be a parade.”

I know.  That’s a lousy intro, but I love that episode and am likely to quote it incessantly.

So, here’s the question:  what do you want?

What do you want to do?  What do you want to accomplish?  What bugs you that you’d like to fix?

In his book Found:  God’s Will (Originally titled God’s Will is not Lost), John MacArthur holds that as long as you are immersed in scripture, submitting to proper authorities, and willing to suffer for doing right, the secret to finding God’s will is this:

Do whatever you want.

He uses the example of a parked monster truck.  It’s extremely hard to turn it around.  Unless you start it up and start driving it, that is.  And we can see this right in Acts.  God sends Paul a vision of a Man from Macedonia, and blocks Paul’s way into other areas of the world, in order to get him to go to Macedonia.  But Paul himself does whatever he thinks is best until God says otherwise, and doesn’t second-guess himself when God says otherwise!

Even if you’re not a Christian, “What do you want?” is an important question.  If you don’t know what you want, you will pursue, and possibly achieve things that you don’t want.

When I broke up with the Shadow Lady, I spent a week in her family’s guest room on vacation for the sole purpose of pondering my life.  It was a good investment of time.  I wrote down what I really wanted.  And that list is still with me, and I myself am satisfied with what I am doing and where I am going in life.

Several people have looked at my life and wondered whether I would not be more ‘productive’ on a different path.  But I remain largely immune to their criticisms, because what they think of as productive turns out, for me, to be counterproductive.  I’ve taken a long view.  Said to myself, “when I am dying, what kind of life do I want to look back on?”

To love.  To be loved.  And to create.  The other details are matters of convenience.

 

 

Anya:  When we’re married, will you still make me waffles?

Xander:  No.  I will only make waffles for myself.  But by California law, half of them will belong to you.