What Matters

I have to keep dragging myself back to what matters time and time again.

It's odd how easily I am able to get myself off what is important and on to what is not.  I think it mostly stems from focusing on me:  my needs, but especially my wants.

Wants are dangerous things.  Unlike needs, which typically there is a justification for (food or sleep or shelter, for example), wants can very easily become a consuming fire, an overriding desire that eats up everything that may be good in our life for that which is either unattainable or at such an extreme outer limit that it will eat up our lives trying to get there.

And for what?  In reality, very little.  One of the benefits (if it can be called such) of growing older is the realization that things don't really have the power to gratify like we believe that they do.  Sure, it feels great for a little while:  the new car zings, the new book we can't wait to read, that thing that we have been unable to envision our life without - even relationships can fall into this category:  the person whose acquaintance propels us up the ladder to the next level, the relationship with the other that will make our lives sun and roses.

But in each case these are temporary things:  the car just takes us places, the book will be read and probably forgotten, the thing will eventually be put aside or scratched or broken, the relationship that moves us ahead discarded when it becomes inconvenient, the idealized romantic reltionship will eventually become just like another.  It's only at that point - if at all - we ask the logical question of "Was it worth it?"

We forget - or consciously block out - that life here is excrutiatingly temporary, that there is a reality that far outweighs this one in time and importance - and that we have the opportunity to do things now that will impact that greater reality.  But in order to do that, we have to learn to focus on the important things, on the things that matter most.

It's all a matter of perspective.