Making Peace with What Does Not Happen

To what extent is making peace with our lives a sign of giving up and to what extent is it a sign of acceptance?

This has always been a matter of some debate for myself.  If I suddenly stop trying on something, I feel as if I'm not doing everything I can and that I'm settling.  On the other hand, if I keeping chasing after something which at some point becomes self evident that is not going to happen, am I denying myself the pleasure of simply being?

Certainly the general sense of society does not contribute.  There is always seems to be a sense in which we should always be trying harder, trying again, pushing.  Very often we are told that a failure to succeed is a failure to continue trying - which holds in it a seed of truth.

But how do I reconcile this with the reality that always striving after things results in less than a happy existence?

To be always striving is to deny one's self a simple sense of being, of existing in the moment, in many ways participating in the life that one actually has.  To be constantly looking over the horizon means one's eyes are always firmly fixed on the future.  That's useful when driving down the road; it may create a life in which the scenery is always being missed as we focus on the dotted line.

The other danger is that having arrived to where we think we wanted to be, we found out it's not what we wanted at all:  the job we pushed and shoved for is not where we were meant to be, the relationship we positioned ourselves to have occur is less than we thought it to be, the thing we so desperately wanted is only a thing, not a life satisfaction.

Perhaps we need to simply accept that fact that the reason we do not seem to achieve or reach certain goals is not a failure of ourselves or our abilities but rather the gracious favor of a God who truly knows what will and what will not really satisfy us.  We fight against the fishbowl, not willing to recognize that all that lies without it is not at all what we wanted.