Day 3846 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 73:3 NIV

Slipping

Into what was then, and sadly sometimes still is a love for the life of the rich man as is seen by all of us for what appears to be an ease in which everything has a greater tendency to go right when compared to those who’ve so many cares that their only worth seems often but a wealth of worry itself. All because we seem to still assume that money can buy everything, and that only because we still believe that everything is all that money can buy.

But it would seem that I’m finally learning that money and everything aren’t quite as connected as this world has long pretended.

And in that I’ve finally started feeling contentment, but alas in a form that some days feels only as close as the farthest continent as scattered upon another planet in what may well prove another galaxy that is indeed far, far away. For there still come in this life a fair number of days in which such things as money and fame find me at least curious as to that of which or in which they might consist. For we see consistently this lap of luxury being enjoyed by those whom we then tend to all but idolize through our then green-tinted eyes.

Yes, it’s said that one can become green with jealousy, which is something of an irony considering how that of which we’re usually most jealous is the green seen by others when they look at what must be a bank account that knows nothing of either breaking or broken. What must it be like to be free from that worry of having enough to afford what you need? What must it be to have so much that need isn’t even a thing?

How free must that be?

Well, perhaps not as much as we might elsewise have become so perfectly able to perceive.

At least not the kind of free that we should all hope to be.

No, for the rather sad reality is that our every perception has long been posed upon this preconception that, again, money can do basically anything. And yet we see this life that way through what’s usually a fairly lighthearted lens in that we think of all the good that we could do or would do if we ourselves ever happened to have so much as so many others do. For such is the value of poverty in that it allows us to see things from a lowly point of view that’s used to a life spent both needing help and helping where we can.

And so we shade our understandings in just such a way that they’re rather skewed by what all we’ve been through and know well others around us are likely struggling with considering both the nearness in regard to vicinity and their general standing in society being too so close to ours as considered against the rest of humanity.

Indeed, we are a very comparative people who are always looking around at the lives of others to sort of gauge where we are in ours, right down to even using the existences of those around us to help us better define who it is that we either are or hope to be or wish not remain.

Yet sadly, be it either a matter allowed to matter because of the way this world’s been built or simply our personal agreement to go along with such gloom, the truth is that, for the most part, our most consistent form of comparison is that done in dollars and measured nowadays in millions as such are just the easiest ways for us to gauge both what we have and yet that as considered against the more that it always seems so many others have found.

Yes, we’ve become a people who determine our own worth upon that of those around us who we perceive, usually, as being then better than us due to their having more than us. All because we’ve become quite convinced that life is lived via dollars and cents and we’ve gone so far seeking then the same that nearly every thought that skips through our brain is one seeking to only understand how it is that we might get what we see that another must have in what seems to us to be for us the example that we’re here to replicate considering just how easy we tend to perceive the rich man’s life as being.

All because we still assume that affluence is the only matter best able to better afford the comforts and complacencies that we would all simply love to have in what’s rather been mostly a life lived in all but only struggle and distress.

And yet, while money might seem to make life here easier to live, the truth is that whilst everything in this world is equated to dollars and cents, fact is that anymore dollars just seem to have this scent of something that might not make all that much sense. Why? Well because it would seem that the truth is somewhat starting to be revealed as to just what some have either had to do to get their wealth or rather what all they’ve decided to do with it once they had it.

And while what they’ve done to get where they are might leave the rest of us lost in a lust for their life of affluent comfort, it’s definitely not anywhere near as glamorous as our fascination with all manner of greed and gluttony have long been so amazingly able to imagine.

For the sad reality is that around here money can a great many things, but yet everything that money can buy can also be either taken or tarnished or torn or elsewise tormented. And when our lives are lived only through our eyes that desire to see only the lap of luxury, then chances are we’ll eventually become only more and more willing to maybe start doing what this world often makes perfectly clear we’ll have to try if we’re to get to that where in which we could be what so many are.

Yes, we live in a world in which everyone can become famous, and likely then rich to boot.

Problem is that it’s a very slippery slope when at first a heart decides to descend from contentment into this existence spent seeking for always what another has.

And while it may not happen for quite some time, what it seems we’re seeming to find is that eventually our lives just feel endlessly empty thanks to the greed and gluttony that are never to ever be satisfied, and that no matter what we have or how much of it is had. For such things as gluttony and greed know no bounds as they can always find a way to fit a little more so that that little more is then had in what was just previously a life that didn’t have what it has the chance to have now.

Again, slippery slope.

And this I know because my past has told me so. For indeed, I’ve spent some time in that frame of mind quite fully affixed to the affluence of the arrogant seeking always to see some way for me to someday have a life lived their way. I think all of us have done that in one way or another. And in truth it may not even have anything to do with money or other manmade material.

It could be considered in such comparisons as careers as compared to the relative appeal that another’s may have over ours as considered via the amount of respect or applause they receive from society. It could be something measured in memories as we seek always to have some of these many amazing experiences that we scroll through others having that we instead just might not have had. Or maybe it’s something measured in power leaving us wanting to get involved in politics or some other sort of public platform from which we can better inspire the kind of progress we want to see and also be better seen by those we’re trying to impress.

But there it is!

It all comes down, and that almost always, to a matter made of only people pleased. For the sad truth is that our being so ever-amazed with the wealth of the wealthy is only ever there because we’re impressed with the kind of life they live. We envy the ability to ride in limos and go to galas and maybe even stop by the grocery store and buy something that’s not on sale and we don’t have a coupon for. Indeed, we want so badly that way of life that isn’t ours as, well, we know what our life is like and thus that it’s just seemingly so much harder than that of those who have more money.

Or power. Or prestige. Or whatever.

Because they probably don’t know the worry felt in rent coming due. They likely don’t feel the pinch when something breaks down on the car we need to just keep going so we can keep going to the jobs we sometimes hate that the rich and famous have never had to experience. They don’t know the guilt of saying no when their kids want some new toy that nobody can afford these days. They don’t know the shame of wearing the same thing so often that it’s falling apart.

They just don’t seem to know this way of life lived so low that all we know is no. No, can’t have that. No, can’t do that. No, that trip isn’t happening this year. No, can’t afford to fix that problem. No, can’t take a day off even if you’re feeling horrible.

No, just can’t risk any of this because life down here at the bottom is so often so tight that we know only to squint our eyes when every new day’s sun in our window shines as if we’re just already awaiting the next worst case scenario proving yet another scene we knew always to see coming.

Yes, so many of us seem only to know this way of life in which we wake up only to gird ourselves for what we seem to understand as an entire way of life in which nothing ever goes right.

But friends, what if that’s only because we’ve got the wrong idea of right somewhere along the way?

What if right isn’t something only the wealthy can buy? What if better isn’t actually a matter made only for those affluent enough to afford it? What if a good life isn’t measured in what this world says matters at all? But rather what if life was instead always seen through the lens of gratitude for what we have rather than rated as determined by what others have? Yes, what if we learned to just appreciate where we are for the fact that we are?

Indeed, what if what we are wasn’t measured by what we have?

How much better might we be able to feel about this life we’ve been given the gift to live?

Sure, it wouldn’t make the hard days go away. Wouldn’t make the bills any easier to pay. Wouldn’t give our kids some new toy with which to play. But maybe it could start helping us learn that comfort and contentment aren’t really matters that have anything to do with money or material. And well, again, that probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference either.

At least at first.

But you see, just as bank accounts can grow, so too can gratitude. So too can humility. So too can honesty and its unique ability to help us see the reality of all life as is lived on this earth. And that reality is that while some seem to have whilst most everyone seems only to have not, life has never been measured by what we have but rather who we are. And that right there is where so much has gotten mixed up and missed along the way to where the world is today.

For anymore we think that life only matters when the wallet’s fatter. We think that we’d be happier if we had a house a bit bigger so that we could have a little more space to get away from the family that irritates us. We seem to assume that we’d like our jobs better if our cars were cooler, or that we’d be in a better mood if we could afford fancier food, or that we might matter more if we could afford more of whatever else this world seems to believe matters so much.

But does it?

Does it really?

Because, well, as for me personally, I look back on all I’ve had and all I’ve done and all I’ve seen and all I haven’t and I see only that life was seemingly better able to just be lived when I was just that kid who just lived life without really any comparison at all. For as kids we don’t know envy. We might want to play with some toy another kid has, but we don’t know to hate them because we don’t have it ourselves.

No, that kind of jealousy only comes later. And that’s where things get really slippery.

Because what starts out as our learning to see what others have that we don’t eventually grows into our feeling of such emotions as anger or resentment because they have it and then that spirals into our hating them a little bit because they have what we don’t which eventually unwinds into our hating only ourselves because we’re just not good enough apparently to be able to have whatever it is that has been so allowed to become this measure of our life’s importance and thus lack thereof as based upon what another has.

All because envy really does rot the bones as it finds for us daily some new thing we don’t have or can’t do which all only continues to lead us right back to feeling sorry for ourselves which, if done long enough, only leaves us hating at least our lives if not the losers we see ourselves as having to be thanks to our having to live them.

Simply because we’ve become a people who think that not having something in life is akin to missing out on life itself, and that simply because we’ve become sadly able to equate life with things, almost to the point of life being seen as only existing inside these things that we both want but can’t have.

Yes, again, it’s almost as if we truly believe that our lives would be better if only we had more. But friends, life does not consist of an abundance of possessions. If anything, an abundance of possessions only consists of a desire to have more of everything but life as life then becomes a matter seen as only the amount of time we have left to look for and hopefully get whatever else it might be that we might see that we might like to find, feel, have, hold, see, be before we die anyway.

Indeed, this whole world is in such the rush to heap up as much stuff as each of us might come to crave.

But friends, if it’s found in this place than in this place so too it stays.

And that’s become something that weighs heavy on me all the time in what’s still too often that way of life in which I look to what others have to figure out what it is that I’m supposed to want or need or be and/or become. And well, having done that so long as I have, I’m kind of tired of always trying to see myself in the clothes of another. Tired of feeling like I should care about what others have. Tired of thinking about what others might think of what I have, or who I am, or how I live, or what I love and how increasingly little of it there is.

I just want to live a simple life, a settled life, a life content with what I have and just grateful that I have so much more than I need.

Indeed, I truly wish to know that way of life in which all that matters anymore is just what I need to survive. Because only then do I contend that a soul can be at peace in a place that knows nothing of the word.

For what peace can we ever hope to have when the life we live is one in which we always hope to have something else? I’m tired of something so amazing as hope being tied so tightly to something I can hold.

I want that kind of hope that jeers and sneers at my assumption that I could bring it so near.

Simply because hope was never meant to be something measured either by or for or in the world we’re in nor those we share it with. Rather hope is something meant to perpetually inspire us to grow smaller so that it can then in turn grow ever-larger. For the less we have the more we can hope.

And so as we close I’ll leave you with the way one of my all-time favorite songs puts it:

“Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold, all that you need is in your soul.”

And no, I never imagined that Skynyrd would find its way into one of these posts, but here we are.

And indeed, a Simple Man is all I now long to be because only a simple man can live so simply as to simply appreciate life enough to spend it seeking to do good rather than always trying to have more.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold