For almost ten years, I walked the sidewalk from the employee parking lot to my office thinking, “What difference does it make?” Thus was the culture I was in and thusly I got sucked into a vortex so powerful that more than five years after I left, I could still feel the power of the force of “What difference does it make?” Not to say that the environment was the only thing that moved me from outside edges of the swirl, but the persistence of the message there fed off other events during that time, too.
A few years after leaving, I met with a counselor a few times to get my head around what had happened, slowly and insidiously, over the past years. She suggested I read C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Therein resided the answers; likewise were the warning signs for future circumstances and environments that resurrect and/or feed the feeling of “What difference does it make?”
That insidious attitude is pure evil, creating a force that diminishes, negates, discourages and deludes. It battles the positive forces for which we were born to love, share, create, inspire, enthuse and empower. One thing about the smell of sulfur; you never forget it. You know when you’re near it and the importance of changing your location when your nostrils pick up the scent.
We were created in the image of the Creator, ergo we are called to create. We are to use our gifts, our experiences, our joys and sorrows, our pain and pleasure, our focus and our lost-ness for the specific call to create in every moment of our life. All that diminishes our faith, deludes us as to our potential, drains us of our energy to create … is evil. It is life-taking not life-giving.
Sadly, the feeling can draw you into a lethargic state of ambivalence that prevents the appropriate antidote’s administration: work. Just as we are called to create, we are called to work. We are to produce. We are to be active with all that we have; all our gifts, talents and energies are to be spent, not stashed away in a black hole of perceived uselessness.
As with all of life’s experiences, there is power in all lessons learned. I will never remain where the smell of sulfur provokes the senses of my soul. I will help others recognize when they are moving, or are being pulled, into the abyss to help them come out to the life-giving world instead of the soul sucking realm of “What difference does it make?” You were born to make a difference. Never doubt it.