The world is so screwed up.\u00a0 Our society is going downhill FAST.<\/p>\n
There’s just so much to worry about, right?\u00a0 The economy, other people, my job, the environment….\u00a0 An infinite well of despair and problems.<\/p>\n
But, for whatever reason, humans were created to seek peace.\u00a0 You can look to others for that peace, but because people are fickle and inconsistent, your satisfaction will be fleeting.<\/p>\n
At some point, you have to recognize that your peace has to flow from your own outlook and philosophy.\u00a0 If that’s based on religion or philosophy, fine, but I’m not even talking about something that deep.<\/p>\n
I was talking with a priest friend the other day, and I happened to mention that I’ve been troubled by divisions within the church.\u00a0 He looked at me with some surprise, and I realized that his happiness is based on something simple:\u00a0 warm relationships with people, and a deep belief that his service matters.<\/p>\n
Who knows if his service is actually changing lives?\u00a0 That’s beyond my ability to judge.\u00a0 But the important thing is that he’s dedicated himself to this life of service and HE believes it matters.<\/p>\n
In that context, even a simple smile is important, a welcome for someone who’s feeling down.\u00a0 He’s the one who’s always the first to welcome someone, even if that means he’ll be a minute or two behind schedule.<\/p>\n
He’s content with his life.<\/p>\n
Sure, he recognizes that there’s many problems in the world, but also that his role is not to try to fix everything.\u00a0 And it’s not even to complain about those things he can’t affect.\u00a0 His role is, humbly, to do what he can and be satisfied with that.<\/p>\n
I’ve learned a lot from this holy man, and I strive to have the same internal compass as he does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The world is so screwed up.\u00a0 Our society is going downhill FAST. There’s just so much to worry about, right?\u00a0 The economy, other people, my job, the environment….\u00a0 An infinite […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,42],"tags":[76,56,13,39],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-carl","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-1556","7":"format-standard","8":"category-career","9":"category-newsletter","10":"post_tag-career","11":"post_tag-inspiration","12":"post_tag-stress","13":"post_tag-values"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}