Not of the World

Now as anyone who knows me AT ALL knows, I am not the kind of religious fanatic that believes in removing oneself from the sinful world completely; I watch tv shows some people wouldn't, I read books some people wouldn't want to finish because I see academic value in them. I even like songs with profanity and inuendos in them sometimes (see other blogs). I've been thinking a lot about material posessions though and have come to the conclusion that people have far too many of them and they occupy too much of our time. (Please note that I include myself.) I better not give specific details because those who read it could misconstrue it to be accusatory, but suffice it to say that I feel there is more to life than material goods and that someone who lacks the finer things in life should not feel obligated to be unhappy without them. At the risk of sounding like a loser, I will give an example from Harry Potter (book 5): Harry is very upset about something (which I will not say specifically because that would spoil the upcoming movie if I did so) and he is in Dumbledore's office. Harry begins smashing several very nice objects. Dumbledore tells Harry he may continue smashing his posessions; "I dare say I have far too many of them". I like this simplistic attitude. Or what about Wordsworth? "The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!..." or Sir Phillip Sidney: "...Desire, desire ! I have too dearly bought, With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware ;...But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought ; In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire ; In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire ; For virtue hath this better lesson taught,—Within myself to seek my only hire, Desiring nought but how to kill desire. " Or my personal favorite analogy which is from the Bible, which says that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. His heart is set so much on the things of this world. I think it's because a rich man is focusing on himself and his posessions and how to get more posessions rather than worrying about the important things like God and family and friends. While I'm ranting like a madman, I'd like to say that people who do the "right thing" expect people to make exceptions for them because they're doing the "right thing". I had a philosophy professor in college who told us that he wasn't going to make exceptions for people who do the "right thing". He wasn't going to excuse a tardy because someone was helping another person and was consequently late for class, he wasn't going to excuse someone from a week of classes because they were getting married. He said that doing the right thing can be hard and that people should be prepared to accept the consequences for their choice, regardless of whether it's a good choice or a bad choice. I agree with my philosophy professor on this point and have tried to adopt this mentality into my own life. I hope others will follow suit, although it seems I would be blindly optimistic to believe it will happen. Ah well...another grumpy blog. I hope you enjoyed it!