How I see we want something greater...

I've seen a lot of different people these past few weeks. Being an emotional person, I walk away from most interactions with some kind of impression, something to process. I leave feeling uplifted, or with nagging thoughts wanting to be sorted, or even feeling like I need to recover. Regardless, people have an affect on me almost every time. Hence, I've spent a lot of time observing people, and analyzing my own reactions to them.

When I watch people, I usually see myself a bit more accurately. I see a person who is striving for approval... dressing to please, smiling to please, staying silent to please. It initially makes me sad. Then I realize how much of that is what I'm prone to do. I recognize that I was made to create. Now I do so usually with some filter in mind of who will see my creation and what will they be most impressed by. Maybe it's taking a picture, cooking food, or what I write up here. This also tells me that I was meant to create for something. Or Someone. My inner drive to make something beautiful was given to me with purpose. The times when I long to write down something, anything, come with a goal. Maybe not a tangible goal. But I want it to mean something. I start to feel like there's a reason for that.

My faith would tell me that a lot of what I just wrote is not completely off base. Many of those thoughts come from a real source. I was created, by a Creator, who has the greatest imagination and flare of any being ever. And He instilled in me this desire to use movement and color and snapshots of life and words for.... a reason. To enjoy it, by enjoying how much I see/experience/recognize HIM in it. It reflects Him. I hope so anyway.

There are others things... more features that I notice in other people, then find accentuated in myself. A desire to be loved. A great frustration at injustice. Insecurity and therefore, second-guessing. A people-pleaser. A need to be silent and still. Wanting to understand. Obsessive. There are all these traits, positive and negative, that reveal. I've never been all that great at veiling who I am or how I'm feeling in the first place. How I make decisions, what makes me cry, what I really believe... It can easily show much of myself... sometimes too much. The anger I get at injustice shows that I believe there's a right and wrong. My bank statement would tell you how much I value material things, even in direct contrast with the desire I have to live simply and generously. I see God as being so generous and simply beautiful, yet I find enough of my worth in the eyes of others to feel the need to make silly purchases. Part of me wants to be affirmed by those around me. Part of me wants to give up everything, because my Jesus did. And His life is beautiful.

I sense this is getting confusing. I guess my thoughts are just this... I think people are complex, yet we have these needs and drives that we were created in. And we try to fill them, meet them, thrive in them. We make our attempts in many ways. And the different avenues that you or I pursue on a day to day basis betray the greatest guises of what human beings are really for. Something greater.