Resignation

[saulittlesister]

As I return from Ragnarok to my normal life, I realize something - I don’t enjoy my life. I used to; at least I did for a few brief months there, but it all feels like a dream now - like a delusion that I always knew I would awaken from someday. I think someday is here.

It’s not even that I’m depressed like usual - my typical depression

Comments

[luke_xl8]

Pilgrim's Progress was a pain to read, because everything was so dumbed down. But then, at the time, that's probably what people needed...a time when the catholic church was, more or less, all that existed in Christianity, and its rules and texts were usually in Latin rather than the local languages.
I think that's the right time frame.

Anyways, The Celestial Railroad is by Hawthorne and is a satire on it, and a rather cutting and humorous one...though it pokes fun, not at Bunyan's original work, but at the more modern approaches to "shortening the journey." In the story, there has been constructed a train line that goes from the starting point to the end of the journey with minimal effort, sacrifice, or danger. It is written in a similar style to Bunyan, with the obvious names and blunt themes, but that's much of the point.

What made me think of those...well, it has to do with what Hawthorne presented about the alternatives to the pilgrimage...how most attempts to bypass the real work and the difficult journey end in ruin and misery...and eventually, hell. That, at least, is the nutshell version. Cliff's Notes, if you will. The journey you tread is usually one where you are committed to Him no matter the frustrations you feel. And I've always admired that, in some secret part of me, because I have nearly none of that same characteristic; I tend to bail out whenever things get frustrating, and try something else.