Lessons that Cannot be Paid for

Aspiration is a powerful drug. The dictionary describes it as a strong desire to achieve something high or great.

One of the greatest motivators for aspiration is comparison. For we only know our positioning against something great if we compare to that which we aspire.

Aspiration is in most peoples mind a positive emotion. Yet it can have a dark side.
I hope to be able to clarify this darkside to you.

We generally buy love. Most of the world is in hot pursuit to purchase love, affection, and care. I’ve been a truck driver for years. Going side by side with 1000’s of other drivers in the slow exchange of a mile of pay for a minute of life. Year after year watching the minutes tick away for little other reason than the pursuit of love.
We want to be seen as desirable by the object of our desire. Comically rarely do two objects have mutual desire for each other.
Painfully we strive for a hierarchal ascent from bottom to the top, in many regards a futile and in the end meaningless attempt.

If only we can exercise more, get nicer cars, more homes, and more vroom toys.

I would claim that one of the worst things that can happen to us in life. Is if we get everything that we want. For the world to never to say to us, “no”.

The Fourth of July season is right about now. I spent some time in a boat on the local lakes with some of my parents friends. In my day to day life I rarely see so many beautiful people together in the same place. Gathered together only by the desire for the prestige of floating on boats on lakes, to be amongst the cool crowd is an obsessive desire for many. Situations like this bring up insecurity inside of me. Quickly my thoughts can go to why did I not prioritize owning a boat on a lake all my life. Thankfully when I notice feeling like this I can return these feelings to God. Only God sees us for who we really are apart from what we have.

He provides for us a perspective that the world cannot.

We can fool the world with things and aspirations, but we cannot fool God with who we are.
God does not underestimate us according to the externals. He will affirm us when our aspirations for him are bigger than our aspirations for the world.

There is nothing wrong with building wealth and social status. What I’m trying to point out, is that God doesn’t care if you are the richest thing in the world yet you have never known done anything in to your life that infers that you know him.

Many of us, me included would prefer if we had more where-with-all than we currently do. Besides all that we are blessed to know God in place of that? Because wealth without
knowledge of God can become a curse. It is easier for the ego to rely upon our control of reality through finances than it is to rely on God who may do things not in our own times.

So what do I mean when there are lessons that money cannot buy? These lessons are found primarily in one way. That is the recognition of a pain difficult to feel in self serving life. It is the pain that is felt by choosing periods of poverty for the sake of serving others.

I’ve been close to a few people who have had less than ideal lives. When taking a far out perspective I see that these people are only a tiny fraction of a percent of those who are struggle and suffer on the Earth. Even with the very best of intentions and resources there is a limitless number of people
who need a lift up, a mentor, or teacher to help them grow and heal. There is a certain education that comes from suffering on the behalf of another. These are the lessons that cannot be bought at a university.

I’m going to open up about myself a bit here. There was a time when I became a womanizer in practice. For many people dating or trying to meet someone comes as a by product of life.
But there is certainly a subset of people in the world who see the act of womanizing as an end goal. There was a time where I thought that this was an appropriate way to live my life. A practice that I aspired to. There was a metric I followed for awhile where I was counting my way up to asking out 30 woman in public.

Plenty said no, but I was often surprised by those who said yes. Now this transpired into other things. Often times one night stands and the, “see you later not planning for anything more”.
As I look back it makes me feel how narrow sighted I was.

It was a few years after that chapter in my life where I had a radical change. I was working to live in a Godly way but underneath it all I had this hidden pride about the notch account I acquired. I knew consciously that this was not a good thing. But it was something that I couldn’t shake.

For some reason God send a young woman into my life who was at the butt end of all of men’s selfish interests (of course woman also have selfish interest). It took a long time to help her clean up the chaos that remained after all the heart break she had experienced in life.

Since then I am a lot more careful with how I speak to and treat woman. It is not so much that I do not know how to speak to have certain outcomes I desire. Nor do I condemn others for behaving in all sorts of crazy ways. It is merely the recognition that sometimes one must treat others better than they know how to treat themselves, even when we have nothing to lose ourselves but our own conscious.

Written in July 2022 finished 2023