{"id":117,"date":"2004-05-21T13:37:38","date_gmt":"2004-05-21T18:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2004-05-21T13:37:38","modified_gmt":"2004-05-21T18:37:38","slug":"missing-a-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2004\/05\/missing-a-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing a piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given my propensity toward depression, I’ve been trying to find things to help keep me focused on what is good in my life, on the possible and the happy to try to fight my natural tendency to see the roadblocks, the idiots, and the problems of life in the foreground. To that end, I’ve been reading these “daily motivators” that show up on my customized myway.com<\/a> portal page. This is today’s:<\/p>\n

There is a way
\nAlways keep in mind that there is a way to get where you desire to go. What you can imagine is possible. Otherwise you could not have imagined it. Achievement is not a matter of “if.” It is a matter of “why” and “how.”
\nThere is most assuredly a way. Your deepest desires are not empty. They are not without meaning. They point the way for your efforts. There is a way out. There is a way through. There is a way leading to whatever you can imagine for yourself.
\nThere is a way to what you desire, because the essence and value of what you desire is largely composed of the path you follow to achieve it. When you have the desire you will, without fail, have the means to fulfill that desire. Act with assurance, with confidence, with faith. Though the efforts may be difficult and the setbacks many, with each moment the goal is more completely fulfilled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve been reading these things for months now but it wasn’t clear to me until today just what was causing that nagging feeling that I was missing something: the parameters are missing. <\/p>\n

Yes, I know, this is supposed to be about thinking positive, about achieving the impossible dream (and how hard it is to resist the urge to break out into song just now) but the fact remains that for all but the richest of us (well, when you have everything losing something doesn’t sting so badly) and the poorest of us (when you have nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose) there are restrictions on our lives. Some of those restrictions are voluntary, some are what we were born into; regardless, they are the box, the metaphorical cubicle, in which we must fit our lives.<\/p>\n

I guess what I really need is advice on how to cope when my desires are outside the bounds of my restrictions, when I can achieve half of what I want with the resources I have but in no way could I ever hope to achieve the other half regardless of how much I strive. Perhaps that’s what religion is really all about: providing in a subtle way the advice and comfort that is, at its base, boiled down to “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given my propensity toward depression, I’ve been trying to find things to help keep me focused on what is good in my life, on the possible and the happy to try to fight my natural tendency to see the roadblocks, the idiots, and the problems of life in the foreground. To that end, I’ve been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}