One man's adequate is another man's awesome. And vice versa.

A friend of mine recently preached on Greed. It was a great message: none of the usual guilt tripping, a focus on attitude, not possessions. And it got me thinking, again.

I think a lot about how wealthy I am.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a teacher. My savings and investments have been more or less static for the last 8 years (except when they've gotten smaller). I'm not wealthy by typical American standards (though the impoverished Americans, who actually exist, may feel differently).

But by global and historical standards, I live in total luxury. I buy high quality coffee (at an expense between $0.45-$0.80/oz). I buy craft beer (at about $0.10+/fl oz). I buy local, grass-fed, all natural beef, and I put my three kids in soccer, sports camps, and swim lessons (and Spiridon just started Tae Kwon Do). I call these luxuries.

Nevertheless, I think these are all good things. They are good things, right?

I just worry about the hold they have on me. I want to think of my situation in middle-class America more as mere trappings of a vocation, pragmatic realities, the accoutrements of a life that enables me to fulfill my purpose as a teacher, as a friend, as a father, as a husband, etc. But they have a power that lures my unconscious devotion, and their place in my heart needs recurrent evaluation. This is partly why I'm so enamored with the season of Lent.

Somehow the perspective of eternity must come to bear. Suppose we believe that our present lives are actually an infinitesimally small (but no less significant) start to our vast industrious, future—a future of greater creativity and contentment than we have the capacity to adumbrate with our loftiest speculations.  Should such a perspective not radically reorient our priorities? Could I trade away all these wonderful things for even better things, knowing that by comparison my "sacrifices" were the relative equivalent of giving up ice cream for a single week in an entire lifetime?

These thoughts are not new, but it is so hard to take them seriously.  We admire those who commit themselves and all their resources to a future and a good beyond the limitations and needs of their own lives. We admire them. From a distance.

I sometimes ask my students whether they know that winning the lottery frequently ruins people's lives. They do, or they say they do. A quick google search will reveal the social, familial, emotional, and even financial devastation such "good" fortune often brings. For example, you can look here, here, or here. Next I ask them, "How many of you would still like to win the lottery?" Hands raise in nearly unanimous approval. Somehow our inclinations, our beliefs, are not lining up with our knowledge.

Still, being poor for its own sake or for some latent guilt complex is not a benefit. Poverty is no virtue except where is embraced intentionally to bring a new quality of joy and provision to oneself and others. I do not advise being poor or feeling bad about your success.

The real trouble is that somehow we have never shaken a subliminal connection between wealth and self-worth; the security of our own supply with a proportional degree of wellbeing.  Even certain economic theories seem to suggest an infallible correlation between personal merit and financial success (though the lottery alone should disprove that). In this view, one's soul is measured by its earnings. At the end of the month, not God, but one's paycheck calls forth the diligent and tacitly declares:

"Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master."

And this is what troubles me. What I serve will reward me in kind.

Sigh.

Time for another cup of coffee.

"Welcome back, Loser."

I'm the loser, not you.

It's summer! That means I have time to think about writing (and reading, and yard work, and my children—not necessarily in that order). I have finished my sixth year as an employed pedagogue, and I hope to add a few entries before the insanity returns, but I make no promises—especially not to myself (the only one reading this anyway). I must try to be disciplined, however; and you must try to make better use of your time.

In honor of the end, here's a little ditty:
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Marathon

I'm in favor of dropping dead
Happy having made the run
Saying what they needed said
Breathing fatefully, "We won."
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We have won, for now, but victory itself is a kind of death.

Now is the season: R.I.P.