My Hero Is a Loser

     My hero is a loser.     
     Every way he tried to find happiness and purpose failed. A broken marriage. A broken career. Broken political dreams. A broken reputation. And broken health, leaving this once handsome man bent and blind.         
     He thought he could create paradise on Earth, but everything let him down one way or another.     
     Isn't that how life is? We put our hope in a social movement; it falls short. Or in politicians; they break promises. Or a business venture; it takes more than it gives. Or in love and friendship; people hurt us. Or we knock ourselves out at work, and no one fully appreciates our sacrifice.     
     Futility dogs us. Even my carefully tended landscaping sprouts weeds.         
     The best in life eventually leaves us aching for more.     
     Author C.S. Lewis explains this discontent: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Only in that other realm, God’s paradise, will everything be whole. Perfect. Complete.     
     That’s why John Milton is my hero. When this Seventeenth Century writer grasped that nothing would completely satisfy, he wrote “Paradise Lost.” It landed in the trashcan of obscurity.     
     Not until after his death did critics recognize it as the greatest English epic poem ever crafted. But such praise wouldn’t have mattered to Milton anymore. He’d already graduated to the land of absolute fulfillment.     
​     Which leaves me wondering whether I’m searching for utopia here, or there.