Born with nothing

We were born with nothing. The human being is probably the only species that is born while crying. In fact, it has been studied that infants begin to smile a few months after birth but never immediately or a few days following birth. Anything in between is coincided with incessant crying and irritations. It can be said that there is no human being who is born with good grace and pleasure.

Naturally, we come naked and vulnerable. It is by default, our natural state of arrival. Nothingness. Thus we respond to that deprivation by wanting more. But our natural reaction is to not just want what we only need, but more of what we want. We are not satisfied by just what we need for survival. No! That is not enough. We want what we want, and we want what we want in scads and stacks.

More and more

The wealthiest, the most loaded plutocratic man that ever lived, needed just one wife. But then he wanted one too many. He wanted not just two wives, or three, or let us say ten would be enough. No! That's not enough. He wanted three hundred!

Oh! But let us give him a break! He had more and more of his money in gold, silver and eleventy diamonds. He had power too. Absolute power. And so he could get by force what he couldn't get by money.

In any way, he could cater for three hundred wives with ease. And that was not enough. What? That is not enough? Three hundred is not dwarfed by any other number if we are talking about wives! Or can it?

So, he wanted three hundred more, oh no! He wanted seven hundred concubines! The man is King Solomon. He, me, and you are one and the same. We always want more of what we already have, and we relentlessly scare ourselves looking for what we do not have. For the poor die in the search; and the rich die while trying to get more of what they already have in plenty.

But Solomon, said these words that follows. My advice is to not skip a word in these following passages.

All is vain that is vain

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens[c] to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,[d]
nor will there be any remembrance of later things[e] yet to be among those who come after.
12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

If you have taken your time to read the above passages loaded with wisdom and bounded by vast experience, you have learned that there is nothing new you can possibly scare the world with that has never happened before.

The reluctant goner

Humans toil and moil and exit the earth with or without. And the ground is dug six by three. Precisely. And we all go downward. Same direction. Some try to go six-feet under in style, with a heavily accessorized coffin, and exorbitant attire and the Rolex as if they have time to watch time. The reluctant goner.

But they are gone anyway. If you are going to go, just go! There is no need to paint the street on your way out. Someone said, “Someday, each one of us will be famous for 15 minutes.”

So, what could be more desirable than all the vanity? What else could make sense in the life of man?

People with money and property have come and gone. Billionaires have been praised for their money during their lifetime but have died with nothing except an embellished grave site with a misleading epitaph.

Poor people die too and are hidden in boring lumpy graveyards with uninspiring epitaphs or not one at all. But all have died, and all will die in their due time.

But what is a better way of living or dying? What could possibly be of the essence than the wasteful funeral shows of the rich or the penurious funerals of the deprived?

In thy getting, get this

The word you are looking for is Purpose. Have a purpose. Have a reason for existence in other people other than yourself. Jump out of your own skin and experience the wants and the needs of others.

Forget your discomfort and experience the discomfort of another. Your discomfort might subside in that one of another. There is a reason that a doctor who is bound to inject with a painful medication tells you to think about something else while he directs the needle to your butt.

My doctor once told me to think about my other problems. I did. It did not help as much, but she was done by the moment I thought of another problem.

There is tremendous power when we focus on other people’s problems more than we focus on ours. Our problems tend to disappear as we get busy with another person’s problem.
It is not a miracle. By nature, we suffer a lot mentally not because of the problems we have, or the things we lack but of thinking too much about those things.

Of course, I am not talking about self-neglect or self-abandonment when insisting on focusing on other people’s problems. I am talking about retracting from self-suffocation.
There was once a bed ridden old man. Having stayed in sick bed for six years, he had seen sick people come and go. Many died and left him hanging on.

He had listened to their stories of how miserable they felt in the sick bed. He patiently listened to their lamentations of the more things they wanted to do and to have if they got on their feet again.

Of the people they could have uttered love or kindness. Some had scores to settle with their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers or even friends. He had heard of their self-suffocating regrets and remorse for six years.

But the old man was never a grouch of his own miserableness. He never thought of telling of his protracted affliction. Unbeknownst to him, he had listened to so much of other people’s pain that he had become oblivious of his own, notwithstanding his pain was immedicable.

Once asked why he tolerated his pain to include the nauseating stories of other people’s illnesses, he said, “I got lost in other people’s pain that I lost the way back to mine”.

Billy Graham once said, “Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength”.

Rich or poor, we have a mandate to reach outside of ourselves. To stop the vitiating selfishness that have inadvertently dwarfed our self-worth. To stop thinking that life on earth only revolves around us.

What we find in ourselves most of the time is want. In front of the mirror you always see something you need to adjust, to correct. Habitually when we focus on ourselves, we see need. The need to rescue ourselves even from the things that do not matter.

We inconvenience other people with our own selfishness that even when we tend to help them, our selfishness sabotages our kindness to them.

I once went to a furniture store to help a friend load his newly bought furniture onto his pickup truck. When I got to the store, I impulsively bought a bigger furniture than his. It turned out that loading his own furniture was laboriously inconvenienced by mine.

I looked into my self and saw my want and my friend’s need was obscured by my want. By self idolizing, I oppressed my friend and made him my subject. He worked for me that day, and I used his own pick-up truck. He went back to his family at 9pm given the load of other things I had bought along. And I do not remember apologizing.

We deal meanly with others for wanting to prioritize ourselves even when we do not mean it.

Think of how many times you inadvertently demeaned other people's problems by elevating yours. How many times have you said, "You think you got it rough? Wait until you here my own story".

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

We are so doused in self-centeredness that our lives have become so miserable. It only amounts to sorrow for most of us and futile pride to those who think they are masters of self and lords of others.

Blessings and humble gains are dwarfed by incalculable complaints about the things we lack. The time left after complaints is spent viciously in efforts to obtain those things. Once we get those things, we want more and more of those things and other things. A vicious cycle of self-centeredness. Self-idolizing.

All is vanity. A man can have all but have not seen all. Man has not been able to stay longer in a state of satisfaction even when he lacks nothing that matters

Something wrong

Shakespeare once wrote a play known as, “There is something wrong in the state of Denmark.” I say, there is something wrong in your state of mind. Selfishness. A friend reminded me of my own selfishness. He told me to help a person that is not in my family circle. To help a person that the only relationship we have is friendship and not the genome.

The late Ann Landers, a renowned U.S journalist in the 18th century said, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good”. “And the best time to meet friends is before you need them”. Powerful.

Always remember that, there are two people you will remember most in your life, the one that hurt you the most and the one who immensely is kind to you. How do you want to impact another person?

Generosity, giving, offering, sacrificing is not in all ways about wealth and money. Anything given to another from the deepest pockets of humanity is invaluable.

Quit the self idolization. You will assuredly find out that happiness is not accumulation of things and more things, but is found in the effort to eradicate the afflictions of others. It is in that state of mind that your mind will be healed and the epitaph on your tombstone will be preserved