Gloom and sin

Well, I suppose his obsession with his own sins is exactly what troubles me about Augustine. In his youth he ransacked a pear tree (if I remember rightly). So what? Why torture yourself for feelings and behaviours, such as boyish high spirits, that are natural and universal to humanity? I suppose the basic problem is that Augustine views natural instinctive human desires and pleasures (or many of them, at any rate) as morally problematic, whereas I do not. His moral universe is very different to mine. To be against natural desires is to be a moral fanatic. And moral fanatics tend to want to impose their views on others as well, which I am also not keen on. It's not that I am unaware of my own moral failings and weaknesses. There are things I've done that, to this day, I look back upon with feelings of shame, moments when I might have been just that little bit more generous towards someone, more sympathetic, more understanding, and when I failed; or when I harmed another human being, not so much through malevolence (which I am pretty much devoid of, thank Allah) but through sheer thoughtlessness and too much of a concentration on my own immediate objectives. But I don't think of my failures as a sin against a deity, but as my own failing to be as decent a human being as I wish I were. Nor do I think of myself as a momentary gloom cast on the brilliant light of eternity (nice image, by the way), but more as a momentary flicker of light against the vast blackness of eternity. I think the same about all life, and the higher the life, the brighter the light that momentarily illuminates the void. It is because the light is so fugitive, and the blackness so unending, that life is so incredibly precious. I can't think of my life as gloom, because I am not gloomy. I went through a Schopenhauer phase of trying to view life as all gloom, but I couldn't keep it up! In the end, my life is too full of meaning for me to be anything other than profoundly grateful for it. (Only, not grateful to a deity, since I don't believe that I owe my existence to a deity.)