Religion Project
نص القصة المصورة
- What a life I have had. All the things I have accomplished and all the memories I have made are the only thing I carry with me now.
- Chris! It is so good to see you!
- It’s been a while grand dad, you know, since we just got to sit and talk together. You know, I've been thinking about my life and I think I want to change it.
- Don’t you like your job downtown? You used to be like me when you were younger, dreaming of tall office buildings and black suits and a nice house up on Sunny Hills drive.
- I don’t know that’s why I came to you. I wanted to ask of what you think. (Looks out window at office building) I just didn't think it would be like it is now you know? Everyone I meet has a similar mind where you gotta pay bills and work til you die just to pay more bills and buy more stuff.
- So you want my advice on what exactly? Ways to make money? How to have more things than everyone around you?
- No but… when I was a kid you used to tell me stories about how you were like when you were younger. You used to go on and on about what you learned and how that sets people like you apart from the average person.
- Well my life has been long and believe it or not I have had dreams when I was younger. Is it a history lesson you want to hear?
- When I was younger you used to talk about how getting to know our personalities can help us get to know God and ourselves, and recently ive been doing a bit of soul searching.
- I found my personality type, the Duty Fulfiller, and now I want to know how to apply that to have a greater relationship with God. I did the Myers Brigg Personality type test.
- So we share the same personality type then? Introverted a bit but with a strong sense of duty and loyalty. It’s important to know your personality so we can grow as a person. I did it myself back in one of my classes as a project and I felt like it resonated with me. It opened up my eyes to how I operate and how to continue operating at the optimal level. More importantly it created a transparency that allowed me to accept myself and in turn accept God.
- Yeah I found somewhat the same thing with mine, when I did it.
- So did God find you or did you find Him?
- I uh… I don’t know. I just felt it you know? Like that gut feeling you get when you know something is about to happen. Like one minute I didn’t care and the next minute I felt… weightless. And I remembered you always said that God is like the water in a pool. Always keeping you up and always moving you one way or another.
- Your father used to say the same. You wouldn’t remember because you were still so young. But he was a kind of person that followed his ego. Do you know about the id, super ego and ego?
- I’ve heard you talk about it before but not in depth…
- Well it’s something that you need to know in order to follow the right path to life. Your ID is your animal instinct. It gives you feelings of pleasure and doesn’t progress your conscience or mind. The super ego is what you were in before you came here. Following someone else’s ideas and someone’s dreams or goals. Standard office jobs, going into the wrong field, I myself followed this before someone opened my eyes.
- And that brings us to the stage of conscience development that I am at and that you too will soon be at. The ego, our own decisions and conscience and goals and beliefs, this is what grants a person true freedom.
- So then what are these 3 things like in real life?
- So things like TV or movies or games?
- The ID would be like giving in to pleasures even though you have more important or worthwhile things to do. They give us a brief amount of pleasure and offer an animal like escape from reality.
- Exactly. Now it’s alright to give in to these once in a while because if you don’t you will become fatigued and burned out. The Super ego is like someone telling you what job to do because that’s what they want you to do.
- When I was younger everyone told me to get an accounting job because the money is good. Unfortunately this is where most of the people today are stuck in because they are afraid to go against that for fear of the unknown. I was once like that as well.
- I remember dad telling me that you let him become whatever he wanted because you had faith that God would provide.
- That’s exactly what should happen between parents and their children. It is the child’s life so why do the parents dictate how to live it? Finally that brings us to the Ego stage. This is what I and your father aspire to live at. It is the stage in which we use our own developed conscience to make decisions and those decisions and actions always have a morally good and positive effect. It is the highest form of mental development and shows a major understanding of the world around us.
- So if it is so good to be at the Ego stage why don’t we just stay like that all the time?
- If we do we get burnt out. It’s important to strike a balance between the Ego stage with a little bit of the ID stage. What we really want to avoid is the Super ego stage as it is neither pleasurable nor is it of our own conscience.
- Our conscience is the little voice in our head that tells us what is right and what is wrong. It is tied into our free will. It is formed through the moral teachings that we are given and strengthened by our morally good actions. God gave us free will which gave us conscience. Let’s say someone kills someone else. We can automatically determine that it was a morally bad action.
- So you keep saying conscience but I don’t really understand what that is.
- And you say that we have free will right? That we can choose our own actions?
- Yes. It is a gift from God. By using free will we can decide our own path which just makes what we do and what relationships we have with others even more special. It is out of our own choice and not just a pre decided thing.
- So what is this thing called religious determinism because it sounds to me like we don’t actually have free will at all. That since we all have a plan we don’t get to make choices.
- Imagine God’s plan as a pathway. Now at multiple times on this path way we can choose to go straight or make turns. Sometimes we have a light from God to see better and sometimes we wander in the darkness. Now imagine as well that God has a telescope and can see the end of every path we choose even though we cannot.
- Sometimes a bump in the road can guide us and sometimes God doesn’t make anything known to us. Either way God is with us every step and he knows all the outcomes. We just choose which outcome to take.
- Ohhhh so we have choice but God just knows the outcome of those choices. It makes sense now. So then with all your life did you ever find the meaning of human existence?
- That is quite a broad question to ask. But to answer your question I did. I found it in the Catechism of the church. There is a quote that reads “The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in faith.”
- This says that God has a vocation or calling for every person but also for the church. We have been put here to serve God and to carry out the plan he has for each of us. Another quote says exactly that, it reads “God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us "partakers of the divine nature" and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.”
- These 2 quotes describe the human existence as a life of serving God by living out the plan that he has for us. It’s important that we realize that by following that plan we break away from the super ego and live at the ego stage.
- Wow that’s a lot of insight from 2 quotes. And it is put so simply as well. I watched a movie not to long ago called “Into the Wild”. It was about a young man who went out into the wilderness to break off the chains of society.
- Yes I know it. It shows us that we are truly free when we follow that plan that is etched into our heart. We choose to live according to our conscience and we truly exhibit the qualities of the ego stage. It’s important to teach others to do the same as well. To live like that young man in the movie did. By choosing our own life and not taking in other super imposed egos into our own.
- So now I want to know about your life and everything about it. No details spared.
- Yeah. Let’s start with what you wanted to be.
- Hahaha that is a long story to tell. I hope that you realize that.
- Well when I was in high school my parents wanted me to go into accounting, for the money of course. I wanted to spend my life telling through stories. At first I wanted to tell it through programming in games but the issue there is that others will need to work on it and I needed each story to be told by me and me alone. So I decided that illustrating and writing comics or graphics novels would be the way. I dreamed of become successful and hoping that my drawings or stories touched someone and comforted them or taught them something.
- I wanted to travel as well to as many places that I could. I wanted to have a family with a wife and kids and being able to support them on my graphic novels. Later on I traveled over each continent and met tons of people along the way. I learned humility and compassion because each place was different with different situations.
- I realized that I was good at telling and illustrating these stories and that I had found my purpose of conjuring up ideas and putting them down on paper. Each with their own lessons and meanings. I still had to go to school to be an accountant but I used that to my advantage and used it as a starting point to launch my artist career.
- I wasn’t famous but I was successful enough that the bills were paid and that there was food on the table. I was able to fully provide for my wife and 2 kids. I started at first working for a couple years in an auditing firm and I used my free time and money to advance my skills as an artist. Every time I met the pencil with the paper, I got joy and a feeling of excitement.
- During my time I got to know many great people. I treated each friend I had with the utmost respect and kindness. Each of my friends taught me something worthwhile. We learned from each other through our interactions. Everything they gave to me I gave back to them. All the kind gestures and generosity were repaid in full as a show of respect.
- After a few years I slowly mastered my art. I was able to get multiple graphic novels published. They were successful and eventually I was able to draw full time. I still say to this day that after I quit my job at 35 I never worked a day. Each drawing and story contained my messages. I poured all my effort that I could muster into it.
- I want to be remembered as a father, a friend and a story teller. I want to be remembered through the stories and lessons that are in each and everything I pour my effort into. I want to be seen as a hardworking and determined person. To show you are only held back by yourself. My legacy lies in my stories and in my children. Both I have poured countless hours into for the sake of them being the best they can be. That is how I wish to be remembered.
- Wow that is quite the story. So then did you enjoy your life? How do you want to be remembered?
تم إنشاء أكثر من 30 مليون من القصص المصورة