Skip the Pity Party

The past month or so I have been reading "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. To be honest it wasn't my favorite read. In my mind it came near to being a broken story, with a just bit of redemption at the end. The message I took away from the book was a good one though. A person must live for God or good to live a fulfilling, vital life. The whole plot revolved around this concept.

Anna's whole existence revolved around pleasing herself, resulting in her destruction. Blatant examples of this harmful behavior surround us. Drug and alcohol abuse, pornography, and immoral activities are among them. When a person focuses on self-indulgence, their soul diminishes bit by bit until eventually it is gone. Most of us sway back and forth, sometimes living for the good, sometimes for ourselves

It is human nature to be self-centered, but it seems that there is also an underlying desire in us to do good. Tolstoy seemed to think that this desire for good came from a Christian or God-centered upbringing. I think it goes deeper than that. My religious beliefs teach that we are all born with a spark of Divinity in us, that we are God's children and therefore that desire for good is always there. Only when we, through wrong choice and action, smother that desire do we become unwholesome people.

Toward the end of the book, Levin, another central character in the story made a brilliant discovery. He found that although we make mistakes every day, if we just shrug those moments off and live for the good, life takes on a whole new meaning. Instead of punishing ourselves or others for failure, we recognize the fault, try to correct it and move on. We know that we will fail again and again,but it doesn't matter, as long as we have the hope that God will make us better.

Self-pity makes a pitiful person. When things go wrong, as they sometimes do, just chalk them up to experience, dust yourself off and move forward in the faith that God is at the wheel and will take us in the right direction. With God as our guide, we can manifest all the good that is within us and perhaps the world will become a little bit better because that goodness was added to it.