If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you’d laugh and say nothing that simple, but you’ve been told many times before messiah’s point you to the door though no one’s got the guts to leave the temple.
~Pete Townshend
Saving the world is a thankless job. Ask any messiah and they’ll agree that it’s thankless, especially when no one believes in you.
They usually don’t.
In fact the level of their belief tends to fluctuate in direct proportion to what they want (or don’t want) to hear. So the belief level is especially low when the result of your deliverance is a vicious rearranging of their environment, beliefs, or thought processes.
In fact – they can get downright nasty when they think that you’ve worsened their situation or brought unnecessary chaos into their life.
Now here’s the rub…if you look at the word “messiah” what does it mean? Translated it literally means “deliverer” or “one who is expected to deliver.” But deliver what?
Usually the word is applied in the context of a person who is expected to do something to better a situation for a person or a group of persons, and has been adopted by the religious world to mean someone who delivers the world (or at least a group of people who adhere to the tenants of that particular religion) from evil.
But if you take it literally – a messiah could be anyone who takes you out of one situation and propels you into another – be it a better or worse one. Hey – they’ve delivered you from your situation, right? Who said that it had to be an improvement on your previous situation? They delivered you. End of story.
In some circles these people are called catalysts – because they bring about (or bring together – or attract) circumstances, people and even situations that bring about change (be it good or bad) in the lives of those they come in contact with.
It’s still a thankless job, for it still means change, and very few people welcome change so profound that it turns their world upside down. In fact, they will fight this change with every ounce of energy that they possess. They will struggle with their last breath to maintain the status quo; to keep themselves safe from the dangers of the unknown and when they go looking for a scapegoat; someone to blame their present set of circumstances on, a catalyst makes an ideal target, and believe me, there is more than one way to get crucified.
You find catalysts in the strangest places, and most often where you least expect them to be (that’s the whole point of a catalyst after all, to take people by surprise and shake them out of their routine). In fact, it takes most catalysts by surprise that they are catalysts. They can go for years (even a whole lifetime) without realizing who or what they are and may just assume that their life is naturally full of drama or chaos and that strange situation just gravitate to them for some unforeseen reason.
If you are a catalyst – a modern-day messiah -if you tend to attract those people, circumstances and situations that tend to change people’s lives, then you probably already know that you don’t really have control over who you influence; those people show up in your life whether you asked them in or not. You don’t even have control over the circumstances or situations that occur to enact the change. There is, however, one thing that you DO have control over, and that is how you view the kind of change that you enact.
If you keep a positive attitude and view those circumstances, situations and people that appear in your life in a positive manner, then you will tend to propel others into positive change (though they may at first view it as negative – since it IS a disruption of their status quo). If, however, you maintain a negative attitude and view the seeming chaos and disruptions as something to dread, then you will tend to propel those around you into anger and fear.
Of course in the end, it is the decision of the person you are affecting that will decide how they take the changes that have come into their lives; what they do with the things that they have learned. You could have been as upbeat as it is possible to be, and they still let the disruption to their way of life pull them down into despair and hopelessness at what they have lost.
Whatever you do, resist the urge to become attached to their decisions. You cannot help being who and what you are, and it is not your fault if the ones you influence decide that they cannot handle what you have shown them. If you’ve kept a positive attitude and tried to explain the changes as best you could; if you’ve shown the changes in the best possible light; you can rest assured knowing that no matter what the outcome, you did what you could.
And sometimes, for a modern day messiah, that has to be enough.
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