The featured image today comes from a journal of mine that dates back to around early 2003. As I read the entries, I wonder what prompted them and where I was in my life journey at the time. Fortunately, some of them are dated, and some, though not dated, give me enough to go on that I can locate their source.
Such is the one that jumped out at me today. It comes from Mark Kurlansky, the author of the fascinating book Salt about how the search for sources of salt drove centuries of wars of conquest.
The search for love and the search for wealth are always the best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.
MARK KURLANSKY FROM SALT, P 13
What an insight. That money can’t buy happiness is one of those tropes we often recite glibly, usually followed by something like: “I’ve had money, and I’ve been broke, and I like having money better.”
A friend of mine told me the other day that he’d never seen an armored car in a funeral procession.
It’s not that we don’t already know, as Jesus said, that a person’s life doesn’t consist in the abundance of things he possesses.
We know it , but we haven’t taken it to heart.
To me, it is the “taking it to heart” that is the most powerful and healing component of journaling. In those scraps of paper, we write to ourselves alone, we are much more likely to speak the truth to and about ourselves than we are when we are talking with other people, when we are keeping up appearances or towing the party line.
Give yourself a dose of truth. Give up the vain pursuit of wealth and replace it with the only thing that matters: love.
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