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Today's
quotation:
Covetousness
teaches people to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of
care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for
it dares
not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched.
Jeremy Taylor
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Today's
Meditation:
I grew up
coveting things that other people had, because I didn't
have much of anything. In a military family with a
father in the Navy, there wasn't much money to go
around. And growing up with an alcoholic in the
family, we found there was even less money than there
should have been. And when we coveted things, it was
very easy to convince ourselves that the people who had
them didn't deserve them any more than we did, so it was
easy for us to become cynical and mean and to try to
figure out ways of getting those things away from
them. It wasn't a healthy way to grow up, to say the
least.
So
from experience, I know the negative effects of
covetousness. I know what it feels like to see what
others have and wish that I had it myself, even to
convince myself that I deserve it more than the people
who have it. I'm very fortunate that I never
ended up acting on these feelings, for if I had, I might
have done some very stupid things in my life (actually, more
very stupid things). And I do know to a certain
extent how covetous people feel, and it's not a pleasant
feeling at all.
And I
agree with Samuel Clemens-- covetousness is a spiritual
ailment, not a material one. I thought that having
certain things would make me happier, would make me more
content, would put me more at peace. I thought that
if I would just be able to have that thing, my life would
be better and I wouldn't be covetous any more. I see
now just how silly those thoughts were, but at the times
that I was having them, they made perfect sense-- and they
often made me perfectly miserable.
Are
you coveting something that someone else has? It's
time to stop doing so, if you are. That thing or
person or opportunity is for the other person, not for
you, and it simply won't make you happy to have it.
You have to be ready to have it, and if you're coveting
it, you're not. Do you know someone who's
covetous? Then try to understand the spiritual need
that's not being met in them and try to help them deal
with that instead of focusing on the behavior.
Covetousness is a sign that something is lacking, and
dealing with that lack is what's called for if we want to
make things better.
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