Today's
Meditation:
"Surviving
prosperity." Doesn't this sound like an
oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp" or "working
vacation" or "Microsoft works"? (Just
kidding, Microsoft--I use and appreciate your
products!) The words don't seem to go together, but
when we stop and think about them it's very obvious that
they do.
There's
a huge difference in our lives during prosperous times and
difficult times. In the difficult times, our
problems tend to give us a purpose, something to struggle
against, something that challenges our creativity and our
ability to persevere. Human beings tend to rise
naturally to a challenge, and that fact helps us to make
the most of the bad times. Adversity helps us to
reach down deep and pull from resources that we simply
never would have known are there if we hadn't been forced
to access them by our situations.
In
prosperous times, though, we have to create our own
motivation. There's very little that we have to do
in order to survive--our survival is a given, save for the
possibilities of accidents or illness. And many
people simply aren't able to motivate themselves, or even
to find challenges in areas that are appropriate for them
to pursue. In trying times, we have a purpose of
survival, yet in times of plenty we have to define our
purposes ourselves. And those people who aren't able
to do so, unfortunately, tend to lead purposeless lives,
moving from thing to thing for no particular reason other
than they can't think of anything else to do. And
this is where drugs and alcohol and so many other problems
come in.
In
trying times, we band together to help each other
out. In times of prosperity, we stay by ourselves,
and whether we realize it or not, we miss the deep
connections with our fellow human beings.
I
don't want simply to survive prosperity. I want to
appreciate the gift of prosperity and thrive in it, making
the most of my life. I want always to have a
purpose, or two or three, to keep me going. And I
know that no one else can define that purpose for me or
approve of it--it's all up to me if I want to survive
prosperity.
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Questions to
consider:
What are some of your strategies for surviving
prosperity?
Why do human beings do so well in adversity, but not
always as well in times of prosperity?
Which people do you know who do very well in times of
prosperity? How do they approach their lives? |