Vanity of Vanities
The enormous cost of attempting to have our cake and eat it too.
There is a wisdom that only comes to the impoverished. It is possible to be born in wealth and still experience this but I think it requires a brush with death to escape its clutches. Somewhere along the line the favored child must lose the belief that he or she is special based on their class standing.
Ownership is the problem.
It doesn’t even have to do with bank accounts. It can be other gifting that sets someone apart from everyone but an elite few similarly endowed. It can be athleticism or musical abilities or a gift of humor or acting or intellect or political powers that give someone natural leadership abilities. Everything we have as the gift of our genetic code and fortunate family circumstances, if we believe these define us or that somehow we deserve to have them, become our greatest quicksand depriving us of ever discovering who we truly are meant to be and become. They rob us of gratitude, humility, and rest. They make it so we can’t even comprehend that what we are missing is what we most need. Instead as we constantly review our list of wonderful assets we become blind to our even greater deficiencies. It makes no sense to us that we are missing simple pleasures of enjoying others with different talents, gifts, and abilities. Instead we see others as competitors and enemies working against us to rob us of that ephemeral spotlight we believe we rightfully deserve. Sadly, this can make our gifts some of our greatest barriers to intimacy. As we climb ladders of external accomplishments our personal relationships can deteriorate. We can’t understand why others will not accept minor supporting roles in the worlds we are seeking to create foremost for ourselves.
Our talents and skills turn into our idols and we hide behind them pretending to the world that we are not the little men and women behind the curtain telling others to ignore what is so obvious — that we are the wizards of our own fabricated land of Oz.
The poverty of the soul is the greatest opportunity for discovering who we truly are, but it comes with a price. We must see all that we think makes us special as just some filthy rags. We must come to see that we can’t play both sides, that having our cake and eating it too are as diametrically opposite as heading east and west at the same time. To go one direction requires forsaking all other options, and to sit in the same place hoping things will improve is to live temporarily as a fool just before vanishing into obscurity.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Thank God for the Book of Ecclesiastes.