Day 4018 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 2:22 NIV

The meaning of man

For what seems all of human history it’s been something we’ve been insistent upon measuring via material such as money and the mansions we buy with it. These things and their many like have become the goals in our lives, the very ideals for which we dream, the tangible things that we seem to honestly believe will accomplish in us a meaning, a worth, a wealth of the world’s greatest treasures as are treasured by all. And yet it’s within this that we seem to have arrived upon a frame of mind in which all that helps make a life a life is merely whatever most here want.

And thus us defined only by what we’re willing to do and actually able to truly get done in order to gain our share of what’s under the sun.

But never do we ever seem to stop and wonder why we’re doing what we’re seemingly all but convinced we both should be doing and thus must never stop. Because to stop would pop the proverbial bubble we’ve been building of a life itself bulging due to all the desires and deceptions we’ve either drawn unto ourselves or let ourselves be drawn unto. All because such has become the general estimation of a life’s purpose. It’s all just measured in what we can either purchase or produce.

Thus we’ve become nothing more than factories wrapped in flesh working daily ourselves to death as we strive to gain that life that will help us to arrive at the time in which we find that everyone else is so impressed that they turn to us for help never then seeming to see that our souls are starved for hope and our bodies lacking love and our minds having arrived in this place in which they can’t think about anything but the more we want and what all we’re willing to do to get it.

But friends, what exactly are we getting?

What is all of our achievements really accomplishing? What do we profit if all we think to prosper is just our preferences as poised upon the strength of the dollar and a worry then won whenever it slips and is worth a little less? I see and hear of folks all the time talking about how the dollar’s doing. Talking about how the stock market looks. Talking about how their portfolio is faring in regard to some recent happening that happened.

What does any of that even mean? It’s like we’ve become so obsessed with the green that we know only to speak in greed in which we know only to say only whatever sounds of the way that everyone else wants to hear having themselves gone deaf to hope itself having long held that it was only found in their fighting to find a bit more funds with which to buy in to whatever it is that these people are talking about anymore.

But what will it all accomplish in the end when the lights have gone out and all the traders have gone home and we too have moved on to what’s likely a place that we never gave much time to even imagining as our home as instead we worried ourselves only wasting ourselves inside lives wearied by all that’s worldly such as wealth and who has the most of it?

Indeed, we are seemingly still increasingly impressed with only those who have the most.

Why?

What have they that we don’t have? Again, that’s usually a question answered in such trivialities as money and mansions and millions spent then following them on social media accounts that started out as a way to stay in touch with family and friends but has rather become all about how to improve ourselves so that we too can become those others look to so that we too gain the followings of millions of fans who just can’t wait to buy our next book so that we too can finally look as if we’ve arrived upon the living of that life of the rich and famous we all want to be.

But again, why?

What do we gain in that kind of life? Granted, there’s probably an ease about it as is founded upon our finding that we needn’t all that much striving anymore as, well, once you’re rich you can afford the more stuff that all of us seem always to want and when you’re famous then you can trust that people will keep on lining up to buy your books or watch your movies or want your autographs that they themselves have to eventually sell on ebay because they have real-world worries to worry about and just can’t justify keeping a piece of paper anymore.

Which is what makes me wonder what it’s all for. Because I too have lived my life, or at least a great deal thereof, worried so little of all that’s above that I too have settled down here below in that way of life in which all my fight was given only to know the more that I wanted, the more that I had, the more that I still sometimes fear that I need to have if I’m to have the comfort and ease that all of us want.

Comfort and ease we’ve been fully promised is waiting for us on the other side of forever.

Problem then being that we’re not there yet but are rather still here where there’s still plenty of stuff that we probably want and just enough time in these days and strength in our bones and effort in our bodies that we can surely manage to grab a fair bit before we leave.

But can’t you see? What will it mean whenever we do? Sadly what I fear it will mean for most is nothing more than their having never come anywhere close to even acknowledging that they had someplace else to be. All because this way of life we’ve been taught to live has us so focused on what we want that all we do is only done to win the same.

Indeed, we each awake only to race the sun back to its place.

Every waking moment given unto holding out hope for only our holding something else inside these hands that we dare call ours even though they reach endlessly for things that are neither ours nor are even needed.

Hands thus always influenced by those who exist only to tell us of all the things we need to have inside our lives if we’re ever to have what they believe is a good life.

And indeed, these days we have everyone from diet gurus to religious devotees to financial wizards to self-help hacks who are always more than willing and entirely ready to help us figure out what we need to do so as to ensure that we never lose what they all seem to believe is the very best way to live this life. And sure, many of them may have some good points to make as, yeah, trying to survive on a diet of sugar and soda probably isn’t going to work out very well and no, approaching faith as if we can just make it up as we go likely won’t go well either.

And so yeah, we might need some help from time to time and sure there might be some around us who have some good ideas or logical suggestions as to how we might go about improving our situation.

Problem is that anymore there’s always a nominal fee involved. You have to buy a book. You have to subscribe to a secret account where they offer even better advice but only to those who pay them for it. You have to follow them on social media and spend your days mindless scrolling through all the things they think you need to know. You have to repeat their prayers and say them just right if you’re to get from God all you want in your life.

And we eat all of this up because, again, these people seem unto us as the ones we’re trying to become simply because they have the money, the fame, the handsome looking frame that we’re dying to have ourselves.

All the way up until we literally almost die either working ourselves to death trying to make as much money as we can get, exercise ourselves to death trying to get our abs to show or starve ourselves to death because the exercise just isn’t working all that well.

Indeed, we are so far gone worrying about so many things that, even if they do have some grounds in reason or even personal responsibility, they all teeter right there on the edge of insanity too.

And the problem is that we’ve all lived to prove that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to take this life by the horns and insist it turn out just the way we want it to.

But friends, what do we know about how this life should go? I mean, it seems that our best attempt to measure whatever might matter is still being left to material, money and the mayhem we agree to enduring in order to have them. Indeed, we’re all willing to do some weird stuff just to have stuff. And I’m not talking about anything that may actually break the law and land us behind bars, though many are proving quite willing to spend their lives doing those kinds of things too.

No, I’m just talking about such things as how we spend our time and what we allow to define our priorities. So much of it is seriously strange! For instance, who convinced us that it’s a good idea to spend 40 hours a week working a job we hate? Who convinced us that we need a picket fence? Who made us believe that a faster car would make our lives better?

Who convinced us that we need a new smart phone every year to the tune of thousands of dollars apiece when the one from last year works perfectly fine?

Sadly these have become the things that mean so much in life that they’re the things we give our lives to get. These are the things that we’ve apparently come to equate as being worth our time. I can literally remember so many times in which my mind spent time trying to factor out how long I’d have to work in order for my to have something I wanted to buy.

This is what’s become of life!

Now I’m not saying that everyone is that far gone. But nor am I saying that many aren’t even gone further. Truth is that we don’t know as everyone here is so busy and that being so burdened that we don’t even stop to talk to each other anymore. Because we have places to be and so many things to get done once we get there that we can’t afford to stop and share how our lives are going, which is nothing we’d want to talk about anyway as, well, we’re just not quite where we want to be but will be hopefully in another year or two.

Why?

Because it seems that all of life and the unknown amount of time with which we’ve been allotted to live it is anymore only measured in what we want to gain and not even in how much pain we may need to endure along the way. We are so laser-focused on all our life’s devotions that we don’t even realize that our lives are devoid of us living them. All because it’s all become all about what we have, and thus we never have enough because, as we’ve been talking, there’s always more stuff.

There’s always something else to want. There’s always some new device coming out. There’s always a new movie hitting the big screen or concert coming to town or limited edition color of our favorite cartoon character as painted upon a plastic cup that our favorite fast food joint is selling for $5 with a chance to find a gold one and win food for a year or burgers wrapped in paper with little stickers attached that bring back the nostalgia of our favorite board games with a side of perhaps winning boats or trips on airplanes.

We’ve gotten so used to a life spent trying to gain more that we’ve become what are seemingly bottomless pits of pride and preference.

Always able to want something more and always willing to do something else so long as the doing thereof accomplishes the having of the above in which we can then take pride having found that life in which we hold high whatever someone else may want.

Indeed, life here is a game of want and work, the latter always a matter made mandatory by the former.

Because reality says that we can only have as much as we’re willing to earn. And so, to stay in touch with a very strange twist on that reality, we each give the best years of our lives to working so much that so many other things are missed all so that we don’t miss having whatever it is that we hope to before the years just run out altogether.

But friends, are a few more dollars in some bank account really worth as much as watching your kid strike out the batter on the opposing team? Is having a bigger house really able to make your life that much better than teaching your daughter how to drive? Is arguing with your boss for that raise you really want and think you deserve worth arguing with your wife when you don’t get it and she tells you it’ll be alright?

What are we doing to this life?

We’re all always seemingly so empty, so angry, so hopeless despite all we’ve got that we once assumed hope was. What then makes us think we’re not wrong this time about whatever it is that we’re spending our time trying to find inside hours spent at work or even taking on a second job just to afford more stuff that we don’t need?

Indeed, what do we gain from all the effort and energy that we give unto whatever it is that we’re doing? Because, outside of more stuff, it doesn’t really seem like we’re gaining anything else. Sure, our lives are filling up with all kinds of junk, and our garages too, but is that the proof of life going well? Is any of it able to keep us from going away?

I literally heard just last night this guy say that eating a certain thing or in a certain way increased the mortality rate of those doing so.

Friends, humans have a 100% mortality rate no matter what.

We’ve literally arrived at this frame of mind in which we’re convinced that we can do something that will better our odds of not dying.

You do understand that death is undefeated, right?

At least when it comes to humans and the lives we live in what is this one place that is itself passing away.

We cannot outrun our end. We can’t outwork a pathetic diet. We can’t out-earn our well-known ability to spend all we do earn on things that we don’t need. And, worst of all, we can’t earn back our time nor our innocence nor our peace of mind that we have all already lost unto getting ourselves lost inside an approach to life in which we do gain a whole lot of what means a whole lot of nothing.

We just can’t let ourselves see it that way because we’ve spent the vast majority of our lives believing that what we were doing was right, a fact seemingly proven in that plethora of stuff pouring out of our garages that our fancy sports cars can’t even fit in anymore.

Friends, what’s it all for?

I’m not saying that we stop working as man needs something to do seeing as how the devil still loves idle hands. I’m just asking what it is that we’re doing all we’re doing to have. What’s the end goal in all that we’re going this hard for? What’s the payout? What’s the profit? What’s the purpose?

What’s the point?

Because the harrowing fact is that we’ve all become readily willing to literally risk our health, our happiness, our hope, our friends, our families, our faith even all for what are merely things that we think we need in order to live a life. Friends, aren’t we living life already? And if so, as we are indeed, then aren’t we only losing life anytime we agree to do anything that we don’t either enjoy or at least have some reasonable reason to be doing?

And honestly, is having a new phone really a reasonable reason to do much of anything?

No. No, it’s not. And yet we’ve gotten so completely caught thinking otherwise that we ask our eyes to all but go blind staring at a computer screen at work all so that we can earn a few more bucks to buy what we’ll believe to be a piece of junk just as soon as the newer version is released.

Friends, when will we be released from what’s become a prison of sorts in which we’re each locked inside these cells that are stores that sell all that we then think we need?

What do we need in order to live a life? What of all we’ve found in life can help us extend our lives? Again, I hear all the time people talking all these lines about how they’ve come to find some secret way to overcome the mortality rate.

We’re all going to die anyway.

Question is what will we have lived for before we do.

A bunch of stuff? A fat bank account? A boss who loved us because we worked so hard that they didn’t really have to? A gold watch at the end of 50 years given to one organization that will forget us just as soon as we clear out our desk and empty our locker?

Again, I’m not saying that none of those things are important or worthwhile. I’m just saying that maybe they’re not the end-all-be-all that we’ve all made them out to be. Why? Because if you’ll notice, they’re all entirely worldly. And, well, truth is that we’re not. Our flesh is as it was taken from the dirt to which it’s been promised to return. Our lungs are filled with air that we can only breath here as there exists, so far as we know, no other planet upon which is found the just-right blend of the air we need to breathe.

But our spirits aren’t from here but rather from God, to whom they’re too promised to return.

But friends, what can ghosts carry?

Makes me think of these ancient burials that have been uncovered thanks to archeology. Take King Tut for example. Carter found his tomb filled with so much treasure, so many artifacts, so much evidence that even such a young kid had lived a massively remarkable life.

And yet, despite his tomb being made of rooms filled with gold and glory, you know what wasn’t there?

His soul.

Ended up leaving behind what was so amazingly valuable in terms of both historical worth and monetary too that it made the news around the world as one of the richest and most amazing discoveries in history.

But all that gold and glory and other similar gain that Tut had gained, had been buried with, had then believed in being so vitally needed that he had himself surrounded with it in that hole in the ground, it was all left behind to be found by some dude with a shovel.

Friends, ain’t many of us kings, though we all strive for a kind of life in which we live like we are. But we’re not. And so, if even a king ended up leaving behind all he’d worked for, fought for, lived for, what do we think is going to happen to all we gain thanks to all we do while we’re here?

And since we can’t take anything with us when we go, then why go so hard trying to get it before we do?

Again, I’m not saying that we spend our lives doing nothing. I’m merely saying that we should spend our lives doing things that accomplish things that have some lasting meaning.

All that treasure in that tomb don’t mean nothing to Tutankhamun anymore.

Because he ain’t here.

What will all of our work, our worries, our wars and goals worldly accomplish for us when we’re not here anymore either?

Friends, my point is that it’s not what we do that matters but why we do it. And simply put, if our why doesn’t come with us when we die, then how much does it really matter? Sure, a lot seems to matter a lot in this world, and that to a lot of people too. But all we really have here is a life to lose and time we’re losing already.

But to what?

What are we giving our lives for?

Hard truth is that the answer to that will tell us what our lives will mean, which then tells everyone else what we think we mean.

Surely we think we’re worth more than we’ve gained.

Don’t we?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold