Success on it’s Knees?
Has the hunt for success blinded us? Success, at what cost?
How many people do you know who are out of a job, right now? I personally know quite a few skilled, intelligent, and hard-working people who are worried about the food in their stomachs and the roof over their heads. Fear for survival reeks in the air as locks tighten and thieves rip copper wires from abandoned houses to resell.
The world economy has taken a sudden and major plunge for billions of people. Many of those people didn’t have two pennies to rub together to begin with. More and more people are marketing us ways to make quick millions, while Skid Row is growing with more two-parent families in homeless shelters. Charities taking care of the have-nots are screaming for help, and fewer people feel like they have any extra to give.
Yet, if you ask many of the personal development gurus out there, there are trillions of dollars out there, floating around space. All you need to do is change your beliefs and soar to the top. But no one can get there alone. Business requites teams. It requires people who can afford you, and a world that can sustain.
This is why the recognition of our interdependence and what we already have is so important. What kind of society would we be if we forget the people who love us and care about us, the places in nature where we can see clearly, and moments of compassion, contentment, or peace.
So while any of us could say, “hey, I worked hard for my money..” We forget there are still skilled, intelligent, and hard-working people; worried about the food in their stomachs and the roof over their heads. These people are the backbone, the gears that keep the world turning, and if we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately.
As I talk with friends who are losing their houses, struggling to find any job, and afraid for their survival; I have a renewed understanding of Mother Theresa. She believed it was not her mission to go out and fight the governments or laws bringing about the world’s suffering, but to ease the suffering itself. To remind the lost soul, dying of disease and starvation, that they are loved and never alone again. To let the lost know, that they aren’t invisible, someone out there sees them, and knows they too have lived in this world.
From the inscription on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Stone Soup next Monday, my place.
You’re never alone,
Kaye
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