the best things in life

Let us treasure up in our soul some of those things which are permanent…, not those which will forsake us and be destroyed, and which only tickle our senses for a little while.

– St. Gregory of Nazianzus

I suppose every once in awhile we get the chance to prove to ourselves whether we just like to say that money and possessions don’t matter that much to us, or whether it is actually true! Such is the case when your purse is stolen, and you lose a good bit of cash, several gift cards, your family’s only phone, all your credit cards and ID cards, not to mention the only attractive purse you have ever owned.

Of course, I reacted by taking a long bath, taking up yoga, reading Thoreau and thinking, "Gosh, my life has been cluttered with materialistic detail anyway - how fortunate that I experienced this reality check!"

Or, maybe I reacted by losing patience with a less-than-proficient English speaker at a credit card company who was only trying to be helpful, crying in frustration for awhile, and then sitting on the couch in an annoyed stupor until I feel asleep.

But the interesting thing is that life goes on, whether you are mad or not, so eventually you stop wasting your time being mad. You find a way to get by without the money and the stuff that you thought was crucial to your survival, and you find a new purse too, though it is not nearly so cute as the one you had before. And maybe in a weird way you even start to appreciate the reminder that there are things in life that are more permanent and more important than others, that can't be swiped from you by people with malicious intentions, and that maybe you ought to base your happiness more on those things than on the temporary things that consume so much of your time and energy lately.

That's a good perspective for now, at least. By tomorrow, I might need someone to read Thoreau to me and let me kick a hole in their wall. Any takers?