Charity is a Habit Acquired, Not a Gift Bestowed

Resounding the plagued cry of all the overbooked proletariat, I'm wont to frequently complain of the slippery nature of our common heritage, time.  We are susceptible in equal measure to the extended effects of its influence, and meet it every morning, and lay our heads upon its pillow in the evening.  We just can't escape the penumbra of its greedy fingers.

It is with this frustration, then, that I explain how I'm learning to love in the absence of a defined object of love, excepting my God.  You see, I'm the prototypical heroine of wide-minded authors and bright-eyed adventurers: I'm a girl kicking the dust and pulling daily on the bootstraps of agency, trying to work her own miracles.  I engineer at a desk through the mid-afternoon; I get caught up in the consistency of exercise and evening study; I splurge a little on chocolate and eat even more of my leafy vegetables; I venture outside, driven by the compulsive need for sunshine and mountain peaks.  Compacting all the glee and glitter of life into a tiny phrase, I'm normal, and am trying like most normals, to make it though life whilst progressing.

There just isn't time for everything I'd like to do.  No drumroll, please...  I know you are completely aware of the staggering implications of this phrase-- bewildering that it is so ubiquitously used, dropping from lipsticked and bearded mouths across the world.  Everyone cowers to some degree under the demands of their time, and I'm no exception.  How can I do what I need to do, do what I commit to do, do what I ought to do, let alone want to do, all the while exploring the venture of what I need and want and should do, but just don't know it yet? Hum drum quimsical look.


For the past six months, I've tried an experiment with my time.  I've realized that if I don't make time to love and serve people, I don't love and serve people.  Totally novel.  I can immerse myself in the ocean of others, pressed about on every side by very human conversations, romance, pain, joy, and faces, without becoming engaged in the tide of it all.  It's easy to walk the supermarket of humanity without purchasing a single apple or loaf of bread.  You just window shop.  Maybe it's more like visiting a petting zoo- inundated with the smells of sweat and plastered mud, you can pet the pig, feed it a bit, then walk away and eat bacon for breakfast the next day. It is a tragedy that we live amoung us, but don't love amoung us.

Realizing the power I have over the problem of not engaging in loving others, I've attempted to mend my ways.  Up front, you must know I'm not all altruistic.  There is a reason I'm attempting to learn to love others better. By loving others, and serving them, I'm keeping my heart supple and soft in an effort to further my capability to love my husband and family.  Being single and all the 'such' that follows that statement, it's easy to make demands on the perfections of others, especially those whom I date.  Consistent with my expectations for daters, I'm doing all I can to keep my heart open.

Now, then, the whole point of these sporadic meanderings.  I've made concerted, directed, productive, and sacrificial efforts to take time for others.  I've committed to serving on a specific frequency.  I've made myself wholly attentive to others whenever I am with them.  I try to be cognizant of nearly indiscernible changes in the attitude and situations of people around me.  I practice polite measures of interest to all with whom I come in contact.  Generic and cheesy, it's the 'smile at the grocery store bagger' attitude.  And let me tell you... it's working. My heart is open as a bird on the heather, or a wing of a feather.  I rather do care about those around me.

The best part... my efforts are cumulative.  The more I desire and pray to love others, and the more I produce efforts at the same, the greater my capacity seems to grown.  This is not meant as self-aggrandizement, but maybe more at self-amazement.  Charity is a habit acquired, not a gift bestowed.  The more we strive toward charity, despite whatever limitation or justification drops down from the horizon, the greater we become charitable.  It's as easy as that.

So, I won't take 'not enough time' as a reason for neglecting to love others or developing a lifestyle of service that is meant to consummate in a charitable heart.  Just do it.