Issac Ngatia
Name: Mr. Issac Ngatia
Seminary: Conception Seminary College
Home Parish: Our Lady of Lourdes, Raytown
Birthday: 3/17
Is it possible for human beings to be content with what they have? Is there a time that people can say that they have wished and willed for something and that now, having attained it, the hunger for anything else on earth can be subordinated to the pleasure and thankfulness of enjoying life?
Hunger for something, anything, is the propulsion to its attainment. Those who have never known hunger do not have an idea how it is to get full and how it is to yearn and not get. Even though the pains of hunger may bite, the satisfaction comes as both a relief and an anticlimax for that which one so yearned for and which, having got, one now acquires a disregard for. For a full stomach, for example, has a way of convincing one that he will not need food again, that the satisfaction was not worth the hunger. Hunger for priesthood keeps us going. The hunger to conquer territories brings in the appalling thrill of war. The hunger for companionship leads us to the intricate processes of wooing; the hunger for knowledge sends us to school; the hunger for a better life makes us want to work harder; the hunger to work in God's vineyard makes us holy; the hunger for the unknown leads us to heights of conquest; the hunger for the kingdom led me to the seminary.
One may argue that this is what makes our lives interesting. But to know that even when one particular hunger is sated another one will crop up like a lotus rising in the mud actually makes life one long pursuit whose end no one is able to see. Right from my childhood I really wanted to lead a meaningful life but when I achieve one thing I desire for another. Finally, I cursed all my hungers and desired for unending treasure in God's house.
But when shall we ever be satisfied? St Augustine of Hippo captures this dilemma quite compellingly in his book The Confessions of St Augustine. "When in difficulty, I wish for luck, but when lucky, I fear difficulties," he wrote. Augustine believed that human life on earth was "uninterrupted drudgery" partly because man is condemned to perpetually long and struggle with wants and difficulties. "All the prosperity of the world," he wrote, "is marred time and again by the fear of hardship and by the corruption of unrestrained gladness."
I once watched a dog feed under the frustration of satisfaction and the hunger for more. We were at a party where there was a lot of food. It was the dog's day for the guests kept giving it leftovers of rice and stew. The dog ate and ate until, I surmised, it could not eat anymore. Then when the tables had all been cleared, the host started serving chunks of delicious roast meat. For some reason, I had come to like the dog so when I took the first chunk of meat, I gladly shared it with him. When I threw the piece of meat at the dog, the animal slinked away as if I had thrown a stone at it. It stopped at a distance and looked at the piece of meat. I will never forget its eyes. It looked at the piece for a long time, with doleful eyes, perhaps regretting having eaten what it had. Then with painful resignation, it went and lay down a distance from the piece. But all the time, its eyes never left the piece. The corruption of unrestrained gladness had seemingly overcome it.
I thought about the dog and what he was thinking. It must have been cursing the fact that he was already so full even as a piece of meat, probably its favorite dish, begged to be eaten. Isn't that the same kind of behavior also common to human beings? You long for something one minute, you have it in copious quantities, yet you feel an anticlimax when more is thrown at you and you cannot take it any longer. Then, when tomorrow comes, the heart that rejoiced in the abundance of your wishes yearns for more, again. And this it does without regard of what it achieved yesterday.
"Desire dieth when it attaineth." But does it really? Today I fret and rave about life and earthly possessions. When I attain that tomorrow, the heart sets off again with a new set of wants. And the struggle to get that too begins again. It is a continuum of wants and struggles and it is the penalty for our existence. And when desire for that which we want completely dies and ambition lies supine in steely hearts fettered by the "corruption of unrestrained gladness," that will be the day we cease to be.
