(~) Success
- From: RainbowChristiannohate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (• Ninure Saunders)
- Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 13:53:26 GMT
(~) Success
Money Can't Buy Happiness
Johann Christoph Arnold
Time alone, oh time will tell.
You think you're in heaven,
But you're living in hell.
- Bob Marley
Gary, a friend of mine, was the black sheep of his family. First the
seminary where he was supposed to make the family proud expelled him for
misbehavior. Then he had to settle for a second-tier university because he
couldnt afford Harvard. His parents missed no chance to remind him what a
disappointment he was. So Gary resolved to succeed, no matter what the
cost.
Soon a high-flying financial consultant for some of the worlds biggest
banks, Gary prided himself on never accepting a job that came with less
than his minimum termsa six-figure salary, a house, and a car. He boasted
that it never took him more than forty-eight hours to find a firm ready to
fulfill these demands.
Meanwhile, he had no time for relationships with anybody. He began to hit
the bottle, all the while keeping up a high-pressure schedule. Inevitably,
his marriage self-destructed. In the emotional turmoil that followed, Gary
experienced a Christian conversion. But his real moment of truth came
when, to his own surprise, he found himself neglecting his clients in
order to save the life of a homeless man hed found dying on the street.
The hours he spent trying to find a hospital that would accept this
uninsured, unwashed drug addict forced his eyes open. In a flash of
insight, he saw a world beyond the boardrooms and luxury hotels that he
thought made up reality, and came to realize what he had become: a slave
to success.
A decade later, Gary now feels free of the fear of failure that haunted
him for so long. He spends his time ministering to prisoners and raising
his children, and lives on a tiny fraction of his old income.
We all know that money cant buy happiness. Or do we? After addressing one
especially affluent congregation, I felt as if Id just encountered an
ocean of human despair. After the service, when asked to offer one-on-one
counseling, the stories I heard confirmed my impression. Its not that the
well-to-do have a monopoly on teen suicides, drug use, family breakup, or
hidden alcoholism and domestic abuse. But theres a jarring contrast
between the glitter of success and the ugliness that often hides beneath
the flashy appearance of prosperity. Thats why its often so excruciating
for wealthy people to discover a reason for hope when things go wrong.
They believe that theres too much at stake to dare to take chances on real
solutions; they think theres too much to lose in the leap of faith it
takes to go from hell to heaven. And in this they may be right, at least
if theyre unwilling to lose their illusion of being successful.
Were always in danger of ending up possessed by our possessions. When this
happens, it is a sign that we have lost our dignity as human beings and
become mere tools for wealth creation. Inevitably, well treat other people
as tools too. Strangers to our own humanity, well find ourselves adrift
just when we thought the good life was within our grasp. The real truth is
that money and happiness are incompatible. Jesus said, It is as hard for a
rich man to enter heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
A hard saying, Jesus disciples murmured. Its hard, because you dont have
to be Bill Gates to qualify as richnot in the eyes of a malnourished child
in Iraq or a refugee family in Bangladesh or Mexico. Relative to millions
in the world, many of us are the man who may have trouble entering heaven.
But what about the American Dream? Our country was founded on a belief in
prosperity and upward mobility, or so the Horatio Alger myth goes. But
there is a canker at its heart. The bottom line to the trophies we seek as
emblems of our successa house we own, cars, a stylish wardrobe, exotic
vacations, good colleges for the kids, or maybe a fast social life at
fashionable spots for eating and entertainmentis money. Pope John Paul II
has spoken out eloquently against what he calls the culture of death,
which is the poisonous fruit of such materialism: The values of being are
replaced by those of having. The only goal that counts is the pursuit of
one's own material well-being
The first to be harmed by this are women, children, the sick or suffering,
and the elderly. Rather than seeing them in terms of their innate human
dignity, we judge them in terms of their efficiency, functionality, and
usefulness. Instead of loving them for who they are, we degrade them by
measuring their worth in terms of what they have, do, and produce. This is
the supremacy of the strong over the weak.
We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, heaven
and hell, the culture of life and the culture of death. The low prices and
buoyant economy that fuel our comfort depend in part on the suffering of
people we dont see, in sweatshops and factories we prefer not to imagine.
The deeper we look into our economic systems history of pillage and
slavery, the harder it is to separate the canker in the American Dream
from the dream itself.
Maybe this begins to explain why the New Testament so bluntly states that
the love of money is the root of all evil. Drunk in a money-driven frenzy,
our culture quickly tramples down those who dont fit the economic
convenience of the moment. Wealthy pundits look at Third World nations and
can speak only of overpopulation and reducing fertility. They ignore the
obvious but wise reminder that children are our future and, regarding them
instead as expensive nuisances, drive up abortion rates. In some quarters,
pressure is mounting to offer the aged euthanasia rather than shoulder the
cost of caring for them. In preference to providing drug treatment or
rehabilitation for people with criminal convictions, many clamor to see
them locked up for life-destroying long sentences, or put to death. At
times, the culture of death seems to defy even economic logic:
materialistic attitudes have cheapened human life so badly that many
people would rather spend a dollar on punishment than a dime on
prevention.
The culture of death doesnt just injure the invisible poor; its lethal for
those who are economically comfortable as well. If success is our main
goal for living, what happens when it eludes us? Having invested so much
of our time and even personal identity in our goal, can we bear to fall
short? The terrible secret is that our ambition for the good life may
serve only to doom us to self-hate, mental breakdown, and suicideor thats
how Tom, a long-time friend of mine, sees it. His father was a
pediatrician, an attentive father, and a popular member of his community
when he put a gun to his head:
Dads finances were still in the red even after re-mortgaging our large
home and asking Mom to come out of retirement to act as his secretary.
Meanwhile, I was enrolled in a small and expensive college in Maine, and
Rick, a grade younger, was college bound next year. None of us sensed how
heavily Dads feeling of failure and money issues weighed on him.
I have always felt that Dad waited to kill himself until he knew I was
home from college for Christmas vacation. That way, I would be there to
help the rest of my family through the aftermath. I knew it the moment I
heard the rifle report. I think he had wrestled within himself, silently
and alone, worried about what had gone wrong financially, and what life
still meant to him. Dad must have felt lonely for a long time, since hed
only known success, and did not find a way to discuss his sense of
failure.
When the police arrived they asked right away for the suicide note. Theres
always a note, they said. And there wasI had already found it pinned in
his wallet and was reading it before an officer snatched it from me. The
terrible thing about the note wasnt the message faded and on frayed paper:
Dear God have mercy on me. I do not see any way out of my problems. What
hit me were the small pinholes shining through the last words of my
father. This note had been pinned and unpinned again and again, until the
last time. How many times had he pinned it to himself only to be spared
through some sudden interruption: The kids are back from the ball game so
early! Or, Whos there at the back doorthe dogs barking! Or, Moms coming
downstairsnot now!
Tom feels now that his father shot himself because he knew his family
adored him, and he couldnt bear failing in their eyes. Toms own childhood
idea of Dad as a superherosomeone who couldnt be hurtoutlived his father
in Toms nightmares:
Even when asleep, I found myself at the mercy of powerful dreams I learned
to loathe. In the theater of my mind, there were two recurring nightmares.
It was only a question of which one was playing that particular night. One
of them starred my Dad escaping with a minor head wound, as in all the
Hollywood war flicks. He was fine, and the only sign of his gunshot wound
in this dream was his white head bandage. It was odd to watch Dad going
about the den and adjusting the Hi Fi with the bandage on, butas the story
wentat least he was alive.
The second dream had the same theme as the other: Nothing can hurt my Dad.
In this dream, Dad gathered the clan on the back porch and courageously
broke the news: Kids, in order to make ends meet, Im sorry, but were going
to have to sell the big house. Right on cue, we kids would respond, with
full understanding, Hey Dad, thats OK. Dont worry, Dad. We can do that. We
can make it.
Tom says he wonders why his father couldnt communicate with anyone about
the threats eating away at his dreams of success and at his self-worth.
Did he feel that he always needed to be the perfect father, strong,
resourceful, and gregarious? Perhaps the legacy of his tragic end is
thisthe lesson that though admitting and embracing our failures is
painful, the inability to face them can be lethal. If we learn this, says
Tom, perhaps Dad did not die in vain.
How can we best find the way of escape? We can start by thinking hard
about what we value. Do we put our faith in money and the material signs
of having made it, or do we find our fulfillment in close relationships
and a strong purpose for living? If we recognize the traps of materialism,
what are the seductive distractionsthe house, clothes, cars, and small
luxuries of the good lifethat we need to be rid of? Boldness and honesty
are better guides than caution as we act to free ourselves to pursue our
real goals. The process of passing through the needles eye by reducing our
possessions is a tough one, but its the surest exit from the confines of
materialism.
Another thing we must look at is our underlying view of success, for it
determines much, if not most, of the goals we strive toward. Too often we
think that by trying to be the perfect parent or churchgoer well reach our
potential and contribute to other peoples lives. By driving ourselves in
this way, however, we painstakingly prepare our own catastrophe. The
perfect mother can drive her children to rebellion (and herself crazy);
the perfect churchgoer can forget the purpose of his religion.
Perhaps were in greatest danger when the success we idolize comes in the
form of humanitarian or religious accomplishments. Its easy to point at
others who, by driving for perfection in the good works to which they
devote their lives, end up narrowing their vision, damaging their
marriage, or burning out. Still, its harder for us to accept that our own
noble-sounding justifications for chasing noteworthy achievements will
enslave us, less crassly but just as surely as materialism will.
Thats what Henri Nouwen, who left a life of academic distinction at Yale
to become part of a community of disabled people, came to conclude: We
have been called to be fruitfulnot successful, not productive, not
accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort.
Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own
weakness.
Anyone who is realistic about human mortality will sense the truth of
Nouwens words. Whether we have weeks or decades ahead of us, our lives
will one day come to an end. We all know this, of course, but what do we
do with our knowledge?
Many of us do nothing. By and large, we need to admit that our lives are a
series of squandered opportunities. Its tempting to refuse to consider
this shocking possibility and to turn our mental gaze elsewhere. Yet we
know we are empty. We suspect that the kinds of success we strive for
arent worth that much anyway. Our private lives dont express the joy and
the love that we would like to think they do. The promise of our childhood
remains unfulfilled; wounds of the past remain unhealed. We are scared of
getting sick, of going crazy, of dying. Though painful, accepting the
knowledge of our failure is the healthiest and most fruitful thing we can
do for our spiritual life. As character Tyler Durden puts it in the
unlikely film Fight Club:
You have to give up. You have to realize that someday you will die. Until
you know that, you are useless. Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake! You are the same decaying
organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost
heap. We are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world.
This is your life; it doesn't get any better than this. This isn't a
seminar, this isn't a weekend retreat. This is your life, and it is ending
one minute at a time.
Tylers rant may strike some as nihilistic, but it administers a dose of
vital, if brusque, wisdom. We must hit rock bottom for recovery to begin.
Acknowledging our failure need not depress or shame usafter all, its the
common lot of humankind that we are not who were meant to be, and this
ought to bring us together.
The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, Love even your sins, for they
will make you love God more. Obviously he does not mean that we should
embrace evil. But he does mean that the sooner we acknowledge our
sinfulness, the sooner will we recognize our need for healing. As Jesus
put it, The healthy have no need of a physician, but the sick do. And
thats who he came for: prostitutes and tax collectors, the blind, the
lame, and the demon-possessed. As for himself, he wasnt good at all. He
was a blue-collar worker who worked on the Sabbath, exposed the clergy,
denounced his countrys political leader as a fox, and wreaked havoc in a
holy place.
Too often we do our best to hide our weaknesses and failures from each
other by struggling to keep up a respectable front. Afraid of revealing
our inner unhappiness, we build walls around ourselves to block out
others. Why do we pass each other by, wrapped up in our own thoughts and
fears? Perhaps it is because we are afraid to be seen for who we are. But
as Jesus compassion toward those around him illustrates, lifes deepest
fulfillment comes from valuing every human encounter, and showing love to
everyone we meet, especially if they are lonely, despairing, or beaten
down. What excuse can there be for not conquering our shyness in loving?
As soon as were free from our drive to earn, produce, and achieve, well
discover in every encounter the joy of finding someone to love as we love
our self. Such encounters do not vanish with time: they are immortal for
us, with lasting value. As the novelist Alice Walker writes:
Our last five minutes on earth are running out. We can spend those minutes
in meanness or we can spend them consciously embracing every glowing soul
who wanders within our reach.
Excerpted from Escape Routes, available FREE in e-book format.
2005 The Bruderhof Foundation. Used with permission.
=========================================================================
Pax Christi,
? Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
Jesus is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://Ninure-Saunders.tk
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