The Way Fayer

What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

To have, to keep.

To hold, to cherish.

What does it mean to have it all? All as in enough? All as in the world?

All as in … more?

Can we fathom its depths, ones we can’t see?

Can we taste its fruit, those of infinity?

These are important questions, no matter how difficult they are to answer. I opened this post with the familiar verbs often included in wedding vows because “having it all” requires a marriage of sorts—and, admittedly, I have been going to a lot of weddings (attending rather than crashing, I maintain).

Given our physical, psychological, and spiritual capacities in this life, limited as they are, all is almost certainly unattainable right now. Rather, it is an ideal that we must follow without any expectation of reaching, at least until the dawn of another world.

There is a popular argument in the history of philosophical thought, one that C.S. Lewis called the “argument from desire.” This argument says that the totality of our desires must exist somewhere else since we can’t fulfill them now, and yet exist they must because we have those desires all the same. Additionally, we can know these desires are real because there is no such thing as a desire without a reality to meet it: for example, water quenches thirst and planes allow man to fly.

Despite its flaws, this argument captures a brilliant truth: the right ideal informs our actions in meaningful ways, and it’s not unlikely that our desires intend to guide us home—as long as we follow the right path with an adequate understanding of the desires that guide us.

Similarly, Plato’s Theory of Forms supposed that all objects are merely reflections of perfect forms in another heavenly or divine realm of being. How is it, for instance, that we can distinguish a water bottle from any other object? Water bottles come in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes. Well, Plato says, because somewhere there exists the perfect, idealized form of water bottles—the ultimate water bottle, if you will—in that heavenly realm.

So finding our way to that ideal—to the promised land of the body, heart, mind, and soul—to the presently unattainable all—requires marrying the Spirit that takes us there. We must be bound to it.

And what do I think this means? I think it means having faith in the miraculous. I think it means taking on life’s suffering with acceptance, resilience, and the belief that more is on the horizon of consciousness.

It means looking at the world and all of its mysteries, perplexed by the unexplainable and curious enough to charter the depths with souls wide open. It means looking at what can be seen as a reflection of the unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.

Only in marrying being, existence, and pure actuality can man make more than his years can tell on the basis of mortality.

So “having it all” takes time, and though seemingly impossible right now—however great a peace one might find on earth—maybe it’s merely a reflection of heaven’s possibilities, unbounded as heaven is by death.

Thus, as it relates to all, the journey begins now by adjusting our sails to the winds of eternity.

Amen: “so be it.”