This is a very misleading title, I know. This is not a blog about existential crises (I’ve had enough of those) or miserable Race experiences.
Instead, it’s a blog born of many years in theater and taking long bus rides just after watching the recent movie adaptation of Into the Woods.
We had 3 separate bus rides to get us from Tarija, Bolivia, to Santiago, Chile, for a grand total of 50 hours spent just in transit. (We thankfully had a few hours to spare in the city of Iquique, where we celebrated the privilege of eating real food instead of chips, crackers, and cookies.)
Long bus rides = lots of time staring out the window absorbed in my own head.
And when you’ve spent enough time as a theater geek, looking at the beautiful night sky makes you think of the song Stars from Les Miserables. And thinking of Les Miserables reminds you of Into the Woods. And that makes you think about your favorite song from said musical.
I love this song for the clever back-and-forth between the two princes, but as it ran through my head in a loop the other day, I started thinking more about the lyrics.
And because I’m a good Presbyterian, those thoughts arranged themselves into three points that we can take away from this story.
1) Comparison happens to everyone.
Whether you’re a prince or a baker or an engineer or a teacher, it’s human nature to compare yourself to other people. And typically when we do this, we come up lacking. But we miss out on so much when we just assume that others are more put together than we are – we lose authenticity and start to distance ourselves from people who are probably having the exact same doubts as we are.
The princes conclude their agony retellings with a stanza beginning, “Agony! Misery! Woe! Though it’s different for each.” All of us experience different life events in different ways. But comparing our outside appearances doesn’t do any good. Instead, God wants us to acknowledge our differences and move past them, so we can know each others’ hearts.
2) We’re always longing for the future instead of living in the present.
As Prince Charming says, “When the one thing you want is the only thing out of your reach!”
This has been a bad habit of mine for a long time, one that I’m still learning how to kick. I thought I would find the ever-elusive happiness I craved once I graduated high school. Or once I finished college. Or when I got a real job. Or so many others things.
We are not getting the most out of life if we can’t live in the present. If we think the key to happiness and success lies in something that we don’t already have. If we ignore the blessings we have due to the fact that we don’t have something else.
Nowadays, while I’m very excited and confident God has great things in store for my life, I’m also happy to leave them in the future where they belong. There’s plenty of things happening in the here and now to occupy my brain-space!
3) We’re never satisfied with what we have, even if we got what we wanted.
Not included in the movie is the reprise of this song in Act Two. In it the princes, having married the fairy tale characters they were pining after in the first act, find two new princesses locked away. And being princes, they are more enticed by the new unknown than they are content with the lives they share with their wives.
How often do we do this!
We finally achieve a goal and suddenly find that there’s five more – five new, different, better things we want instead. We don’t give ourselves any time to enjoy life because we’re always striving to have more. And that kind of wanting can never be satisfied; it’s like a black hole.
However, when we stop comparing, stop longing, and start relying on God, amazing things can happen.
That is one of the greatest takeaways for me from this journey. Little blessings make me so much more grateful now than they used to. Small moments of joy bring me the lasting contentment I was dreaming of. This isn’t because of anything I’ve changed, but because of how God has changed me. When I started looking to Him for my answers, life got a lot easier and a whole lot more fulfilling.
