Category: secular world

The Darkness of the World.

The world is messed up.

If you are paying even the tiniest bit of attention to what’s going on in the world, you might just finally realize that this world is more evil than you would ever imagine, and with vastly complicit help not only from political leaders, but also from the average populace.

I’m sometimes surprised at how jaded I’ve become.  As a young idealist way back in the old days, I had all the optimistic and positive outlooks anyone could have.  That’s saying a lot.  Last year, with a new President in office, I barely delved deep into the current events.  I had it in my mind that he was the same as he was in his first term, so what was there to worry about?  This year began just as pacific for me, until February 28 with the war, and since then, well, you know how nutty everything has become.  Or has it?

My best friend mentioned to me that he noticed that this President wasn’t the same, and maybe so since last fall.  That’s when I took a better look and realized he was on to something.  Yes, he certainly is not the guy we voted for.  We were all duped.

People in general have changed, and vastly so since 2020.  It seems that people have such ease in lying right to your face.  They’re ruder.  They even seem to be lazier.  None of it is good.

The Church isn’t the Church I grew up in.  It’s now the Synodal Church.  The true Roman Catholic Church exists, but one must diligently look for it in other places.  I question the current Pope in the form of Robert Prevost, because what he teaches is, well, all over the place with little consistency for Roman Catholicism.

Nevertheless, I think, the longer a person is on this Earth and seriously pays attention to the idiocy that seems to accelerate by the hour, just about anyone could get pretty jaded.  That’s why I am working towards being in the world, but not OF this world.  It’s sometimes a struggle, because I have it in my head that I need to know what’s going on in the world now, for instance, when the bomb is going to be dropped.  Conversely, isn’t it better to not know, and just be spiritually ready for it exploding at any minute?  Yeah, probably.

The moral disorder in our world is far more profound than the everyday vapid scandals people argue about.  It extends beyond routine political dishonesty and the familiar patterns of institutional failures.  What we are now being confronted with instead are deeper, more sinister forms of corruption; systems of exploitation and abuse that flourish in secrecy and rely on the complacency of the very structures meant to safeguard the vulnerable.  These forces are not isolated or accidental; they are organized, persistent, and woven through the generations from the beginning of time.  Their influence reaches into the institutions that shape public life: government, law, media, entertainment, finance, sports, religious establishments, et al.  This is perhaps why meaningful accountability rarely materializes.  The problem is not that the system has malfunctioned; the problem is that the system, as it currently operates, protects the very darkness it should be exposing.  The world is operating exactly how it’s supposed to, with all the evil engrained in it.

Drain the swamp?  Catchy little slogan, that is.  Instead of draining, the loudest mouths just went ahead and joined the swamp.  Why not?  It’s profitable, and in so many ways, too.

It is naïve to think that the ordinary general public will rise to meet these challenges.  Sure, it’s a nice thought that people will wake up and fight for a successful end to malevolence, but in reality, most people, overwhelmed by the pace of modern life and the cozy comfort of laziness and apathy, have settled into becoming passive observers rather than active participants.  Assuredly, outrage flares briefly online with an angry post typed from behind the keyboard, a click of a shared headline, a momentary surge of indignation, but only to retreat into familiar routines.  But when the moment any public criticism touches celebrities or political figures, the reaction is even more predictable: people defend the evil and/or the evil doer or just shut down and move on to something insipid and vapid, which is usually their comfort zone.  Their attachment to public figures functions as modern idolatry, a sick and macabre loyalty that overrides discernment and sensibility.  Many people will defend entertainers, influencers, government notables, popes and televangelists, and other public personalities despite recurring scandals, unanswered questions, weird speeches from pulpits, and patterns of troubling associations.  For them to confront those realities would require them to acknowledge that their long‑held assumptions were misplaced, that trust was given too freely, and that the narratives shaping their lives were not as benevolent as they believed.  For many, that admission is too costly; therefore, comfort becomes preferable to clarity, and distraction becomes easier than responsibility.

There is also a deeper layer of wrongdoing that most people cannot bear to confront.  Beneath the surface of public life exist networks, institutions, and hidden spaces where exploitation thrives, albeit hidden.  These are not the sensationalized fantasies people dismiss, but the quieter, more pervasive forms of abuse and corruption that flourish when shielded from scrutiny.  The very idea of such concealed systems unsettles people, not only because of the moral horror they imply, but because acknowledging them would require reconsidering the trust they place in the social structure.  This is why so few bother to investigate further.  Once one begins to see the depth of institutional rot and mold, it becomes impossible to return to the comfort of ignorance; yet many people would rather stay in their pretty little cocoons and not be bothered.  Peel me another grape, Daphne.

Is the present moment an actual “awakening?”  That’s hard to say, but even if that is true, it is an uneven one.  Most people struggle to sustain attention in a world engineered for constant distraction.  A new crisis, a new headline, a new spectacle appears, and public focus instantly resets.  The duplicitous news stories change faster than the weather in Chicago.  Faster, faster Pussycat, whip up the chaos!  Whip it up good!   Chaos and confusion, to and fro.

Outrage becomes episodic rather than transformative.  The average citizen does not demand accountability, structural reform, or transparency; instead, they drift back into the familiar rhythms of daily life.  They continue to support the very systems they criticize, through consumption, through compliance, through lazy habits.  In this sense, the problem is not merely institutional corruption but a culture that has grown accustomed to passivity, comfort, and distraction, even in the face of profound moral failure.

The individuals who perpetuate profound harm are not merely “troubled;” they embody a level of moral corruption that defies explanation.  Their actions reveal a conscience that has been systematically eroded, a capacity for empathy that appears extinguished.  Yet, they move through public life with practiced ease— smiling for cameras, delivering speeches, presenting themselves as benefactors, all the while concealing the ethical void that enables their behavior.  This dissonance between public image and private reality is precisely what allows such corruption to persist.

Yet these systems endure not only because of those who exploit them, but because of the collective willingness to look away.  As long as society continues to fund, celebrate, and unquestioningly trust the institutions and figures who benefit from the status quo, little to nothing will ever change.  Evil does not thrive simply because it is powerful; it thrives because good people convince themselves it is safer not to see it.  It’s so easy to play the poor put upon ostrich and bury one’s head in the sand.  The refusal to confront uncomfortable truths becomes, in effect, a form of approval and permission.

Cognitive dissonance is real, but far more often, it’s more of the slow erosion caused by apathy, constant confusion, and the relentless flood of information, outrage, and accusation.  When every voice demands attention and every headline contradicts the last, people slip into a kind of mental fog — not because they’re incapable of thinking, but because they’re exhausted by the effort and they would rather take the easy way.  And in that dazed state, many retreat to what feels familiar.  They worship their idols.  They cling to the idols that reflect their preferred illusions, the figures who reinforce their false beliefs and offer the comfort of never having to question anything at all.

The world is very messed up.

 

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Money and the Shape of Life.

Lately I’ve been returning to and thinking about topics I hadn’t examined in a while, and one of them is money, how it shaped my choices, how it ordered my days, and how quietly it became a measure of my worth without my ever intending it.

There was a long stretch when money and job position sat at the center of my work life.  I was always looking toward the next promotion, the next pay step increase, the bonus, the next annual bump in my grade level, the next cost‑of‑living increase.  Each milestone felt like progress, like proof that I was moving forward and being successful (whatever that was).  And overtime?  I never turned it down.  It was money in my pocket, yes, but it was also work experience to add another line on the résumé, another rung on the ladder of upward mobility in middle management.

And then came the question of retirement.  The more I earned and the higher I climbed, the more secure my future seemed.  I’ve always belonged to the “Waste Not, Want Not” tribe, careful, frugal, planning.  I was planning my retirement since my first full-time job after graduating from school.  It felt responsible to think about the long game, to build a cushion, to prepare for the day when work would no longer be on my daily schedule.

By most measures, I did well in the career jungle.  I worked hard, advanced steadily, and positioned myself for a sensible retirement.  But to what end, really?  Some of what I gained came at the cost of things I didn’t even realize I was losing.  I missed moments that could have enriched my life in ways no paycheck ever could.  My eyes were fixed on the horizon with an early retirement, a new chapter, a better future, while the present quietly slipped by.

Money is necessary, of course, since it keeps the lights on and the pantry stocked.  But it was never meant to be the focus; it sort of turned out that way without me paying close attention.  You see, when it becomes the center, even subtly, it distorts the way we see our days and the way we measure our worth.  Looking back, I can see how easily the pursuit of “enough” becomes the pursuit of “more, more, more!” and how quietly that pursuit can crowd out the very things that make a life well lived.

Would a very fat bank account make my life easier?  I’m sure it would, but to what extent?  Yet in the reality of life, I have just what I need to live.  Much more, and it would be living an unnecessarily extravagant and artificial life.

In the end, money can support a life and our Earthly needs, but it cannot give one satisfactory meaning.  What endures is the virtue we cultivate, the charity we extend, the relationships we tend, and the gratitude we carry for the gifts already placed in our hands.  When we let money take up more space than it deserves, the spiritual cost is subtle but real: our attention drifts, our desires narrow, and our hearts grow less free.  But when we return to gratitude and right order, we remember that a well‑lived life is measured not by how much money we have in the bank, but by what we become.

When we allow money to become our quiet master, the emotional cost is real: our hearts grow divided, we become conceited, our freedom narrows, and we begin to measure ourselves by standards that have nothing to do with building positive relationships or redemption.  Yet when we push away secularism and return to true gratitude, humility, and order, we remember that a life well lived is judged not by earnings or advancement, but by a fidelity to what matters for all of eternity.

 

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The Age of Adonis (Part 1)

Part 1 of 3:  Reflections on Vanity, Virtue, and the Modern Parade

He was the sort of man who made a living preaching The Word while somehow managing to sidestep most of its demands.  You could see it in the way he carried himself; earnest on the surface, but with a hollowness underneath, like a sermon missing its last page.

When I first met him, he was almost aggressively unremarkable: small, soft around the middle, a crew cut that looked like it had been administered by someone in a hurry, and some type of cologne that would gag a maggot.  He told me he had left the Church and was now preaching at a non‑denominational fellowship down the road.  He quoted Scripture with the enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered the footnotes and wanted everyone to know and be impressed.  Truthfully, it felt less like devotion and more like a performance of mental gymnastics meant to impress.  They didn’t.

In our brief conversations, he mentioned he was a former drug user, now clean, and that he was “still learning” and had “a long way to go” in understanding The Word.  That part, at least, I believed.

But then something shifted.

Slowly, his upper body began to expand.  It was first subtly, then alarmingly.  I would see him at the neighborhood gym, or returning from it, sweat pouring off him in rivulets that perfumed the condominium hallways with a scent that could only be described as fusty.  Other days, I’d spot him leaving Atomic Health Club in town, towels slung over his shoulder, his wet T‑shirt clinging to him like a second skin.  He would leap into his sports car with the flourish of a man starring in his own music video and drive off like a bolt out of the blue.

By summer, the transformation seemed complete.  One afternoon, he and his family walked down the hallway on their way to the swimming pool. “Walked” is generous—he lumbered, unable to lower his arms fully because his torso had grown to mythic proportions.  He wore only baggy shorts (I cannot call them trunks), his thick thighs rubbing together and his calves looking like chicken legs.  It looked like it hurt him to move his legs, and for that moment I felt sorry for him.  His pre‑tween daughter wore a bikini so revealing it made me blink twice in embarrassment.  His wife and son, ironically, were dressed modestly befitting a church picnic.

His upper body had become enormous, his thighs still pronounced, his calves still comically thin.  He reminded me of a Greek statue carved by an artist who ran out of marble halfway through.  It was unsettling, the kind of physique that makes you instinctively step aside in case it topples or explodes.

He strutted through the building with the air of a man fishing for admiration, or perhaps for something more.  Someone once told me that people who leave one addiction often find another to replace the high.  Maybe this was that; maybe it wasn’t.  I’m not his confessor; I can only pray for him.

What I do know is this: the greater his muscles grew, the quieter his preaching rang.  There was a disconnect between the man he proclaimed himself to be and the man he was becoming, between the humility of the Gospel and the vanity of the mirror.

And perhaps that is the real caution of the Age of Adonis: when the body becomes the altar, the soul is left without a place to kneel and worship the one true God.

Part 2 will be published on April 16, 2026.

 

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Illusion and Theater.

I try, as a matter of personal discipline, not to immerse myself in the daily torrent of headlines.  The modern news cycle is a relentless machine—loud, urgent, and yet, it’s strangely empty.  Nevertheless, every so often, despite my best intentions, a headline catches my eye, and I allow myself to get sucked in.  It pulls me in, not because I trust it, but because I’m curious about what new Oscar-worthy performance is unfolding on the world’s stage.

What I notice, repeatedly, is that what passes for “news” rarely resembles anything real.  It feels crafted, curated, sculpted, and arranged with theatrical precision.  The stories are presented as truth, but the tone is too polished, the timing too convenient, the narrative too tidy.  It’s as though we’re being handed a script rather than a window into reality.

And beneath that obvious script lies a deeper question: What is actually happening behind the scenes?

To explore that question, we must look at the four forces shaping our perception: illusion, distraction, power, and the quiet, stubborn search for truth.

I. Illusion is the first layer—the iridescent surface that makes everything appear coherent and trustworthy. We grow up believing that the world is presented to us honestly. School textbooks, official statements, historical accounts— they all arrive with the authority of certitude.  We memorize dates, names, and events as though they are fixed points in time and that’s all that matters.

But the passing of years and paying close attention has a way of peeling back the veneer.  The more we learn, the more we realize how much of our education was simplified, sanitized, or strategically framed.  History is not a neutral record; it is a purposely fashioned narrative.  Once you recognize that, the illusion begins to crack.

The news, too, operates on illusion.  It offers the appearance of transparency while carefully shaping what we see and how we interpret it.  The lighting is perfect, the talking points rehearsed, the outrage calibrated just so.  It is a performance designed to feel spontaneous and honest.

Illusion is powerful because it is comforting.  It gives us the sense that the world is orderly, that someone is in control, that events follow a predictable script.  But comfort is not the same as truth.

II. Distraction is the orchestra, if illusion is the stagecraft. The modern world is engineered for distraction. Headlines flash, notifications ping, commentary multiplies.  Every story is framed as urgent, every disagreement amplified, every trivial event inflated into a crisis.  We, as the audience, are encouraged to react, not reflect.  Distraction keeps us busy.  It keeps us emotional.  It keeps us from asking deeper questions.  It’s not that the stories are always false; it’s that they are strategically incomplete.  They direct our attention toward the sensational and away from the structural.  They keep us fixated on personalities instead of systems, scandals instead of patterns, noise instead of meaning.

Distraction is not accidental.  It is a tool of control.  A distracted public is a manageable public—too overwhelmed to notice what truly matters.

III. Behind illusion and distraction lies the engine that drives them: power.  Power prefers the shadows.  It prefers complexity, secrecy, and silence.  It prefers a public that is too divided, too exhausted, or too entertained to scrutinize its actions.

The real story of any era is not the headlines; it is the decisions made quietly, behind closed doors, by people whose names we rarely hear.  The world is shaped not by the performances we watch, but by the negotiations, alliances, and calculations that happen backstage.

We were taught in our schools that power is straightforward: governments govern, leaders lead, institutions protect the public good.  But the older we get, the more we see how naïve it was believing those views.  Power is rarely transparent.  It is rarely benevolent.  And it is almost never accountable unless it’s forced to be.

Subsequently, we are left with the unsettling question: What are the kings doing—and what are they hiding?  The answer is not handed to us, so we must seek it ourselves.

IV. Truth becomes a personal responsibility in a world of illusion, distraction, and hidden power.  Truth must be pursued.  It requires discernment, patience, and a willingness to question the narratives we were raised to accept.  It requires stepping back from the clamor long enough to see the patterns beneath it.  It requires humility; the recognition that certainty is often a trap.

But the search for truth is also liberating.  When illusion cracks, clarity emerges.  When distraction loses its grip, attention sharpens.  When power is questioned, accountability becomes possible.  And perhaps this is the quiet rebellion available to each of us: to stop being extras in someone else’s production and instead become vocal observers; aware and unwilling to be fooled.

All the world is a stage… but we do not have to play the part we are assigned.

 

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Live Well and Worthily.

Life is short, and it is meant to be lived well.  Wouldn’t you rather pour your energy into living it with virtue, steadiness, and joy than spend your days wrestling with every distraction that tries to muddle it?

Life is much too short to . . .

. . . waste time.

. . . not read the Bible.

. . . read tasteless books/magazines.

. . . be subjected to vulgar language.

. . . be exposed to disparaging gossip.

. . . argue with strangers on the Internet.

. . . be around people with no sense of humor.

. . . be around combative and negative people.

. . . watch a program that turns out to be vapid.

. . . listen to the “news” when there isn’t any news.

. . . not crack open a book written by or about a saint.

. . . be entertained by raunchy “entertainers” and “artists.”

. . . put up with the rat-a-tat-tat of unimportant intrusions.

Life— wouldn’t you rather live it well and virtuous than fight what’s interfering with it?

 

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The Age of Performed Identity.

How much of our lives have we spent trying to be something—or someone—we’re not?  It is one thing to pursue growth, to refine our character, and to enrich our inner life, yet it is quite another to adopt a false identity for the sake of impressing others, whether for money, status, or the fleeting approval of strangers, family, and acquaintances.

Lately, it seems that the art of pretending has become a widespread habit, a kind of cultural contagion.  Over the past decade especially, I’ve watched this phenomenon snowball.  It has become easier and fiendishly tempting to put on a polished façade while abandoning genuineness, humility, and empathy.  Social media, with its curated illusions and endless opportunities for self‑promotion and keyboard commandos, has been the chief purveyor of these false faces.

And how easy it is.

In a world moving at swift speed, the pressure to perform seems to be ceaseless.  Some people feel compelled to reinvent themselves for every audience, to appear more educated, more virtuous, more high class, more enlightened than they truly are.  Some people, unfortunately, strain to become the moral authority in every conversation, to project wisdom they have not earned, and to cloak their insecurity in a thin veil of false humility.  Some people invent and re-invent their live story continuously.

It must be exhausting.  From my vantage point, watching someone puff himself up by preaching from an imaginary pulpit, presenting himself as all‑knowing while sprinkling in counterfeit modesty, or looking down their nose at others, is a disheartening sight.  There is nothing admirable in self‑inflation or pretend self-deflation.  It does not elevate a person; it exposes him.  False humility serves only the ego.  It leaves no room to serve God, despite all their claims of “thanking God everyday” for such-and-such.  It comes across Pharisee-like when you know their true history and that they are putting on a public show.

Putting on an act for selfish gain is, at its core, a fabrication of the truth.  Duplicity demands constant maintenance, and after a while, there is so much maintenance that fabrication becomes sloppier and sloppier.  One must remember every false detail with perfect precision just to keep the fiction intact, and that’s the hard labor one has to do for a hollow reward in the prison of their mind’s fantasy.

It is far better to remember that the one thing you can do better than anyone else is to be yourself.  Of course, one could make the argument that being phony for some people is “being themselves.  Yet there is less work and stress to admit one’s true self and not make up stories to impress an audience.  Or in one case, I have seen one person who has shared his childhood as first “middle class,” then defined it as “not quite middle class,” to the sad Dickensian tale of “being poor.”  Is that the “fake it until you make it” mantra at work, or the pretend “rags to riches” story?  I won’t bother to hazard a guess.  All I can say is I have little regard for counterfeits.

The world does not need more people parroting platitudes or mimicking the latest persona.  It needs more of the original, the sincere, the unvarnished.  Pretending to be someone else is not only dishonest because it is truly a quiet betrayal of your own dignity.

As we step into another day, we should do so with sober eyes and clear hearts.  Remember who you really are beneath the noise and the pressure, and do not compromise that reality.  Be honest, be considerate, and be grounded in your principles.  Respect yourself and extend that respect to others.

 

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Leaving the Secular Carousel.

A Reflection on the Gradual Reordering of My Life

Over these many, many years as I have been becoming more and more serious about my Catholic faith, I have noticed a remarkable change in myself—one that has unfolded slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, but unmistakably over the last fifteen years or so.  In this article, I write about how the secular world has been shrinking in my life, not out of disdain for the people in it, but because its offerings no longer nourish me.  I have been moving away from many secular things, both by deliberate choice and by the quiet providence of circumstance.  What once occupied my time, my attention, even my imagination, now feels strangely distant, as though it belonged to someone else’s life.

In my youth, I wasn’t a fan of modern music, particularly rock and roll.  But in my sophomore year, one morning while getting ready for school, I tuned into the local rock radio station to find out what the current music fad was all about.  My friends were into that music, and I didn’t want to be left out of conversations.  It felt harmless enough—just a way to fit in, to understand what everyone else seemed to enjoy.

Over the years, my taste in music expanded to that genre, though it never went into grunge or the harsher styles that followed.  But now, even that earlier music has become distasteful to me. The beat and melody might still be attractive, but the lyrics—so often vulgar, suggestive, or simply empty—are sickening.  That’s what gets people hooked: catchy rhythms and memorable musical notes.  The lyrics are an afterthought, or worse, a poison pill wrapped in sugar. I find myself wondering why I ever tolerated it, let alone enjoyed it.

The same goes for television programs.  I didn’t grow up in a house where the television was constantly on.  Until age sixteen or so, television was rare—a special thing to watch, almost an event.  But then something shifted, and before long meaningless programs like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, WKRP, and various variety shows were playing regularly in our home.  Looking back, I am appalled that I allowed myself to waste time on such trivia: scantily clad people, taking God’s name in vain, sexual innuendo, name-calling, yelling, and cheap, vulgar laughs.  I don’t even find those programs funny or edifying now.  The detective and cop shows might have been tolerable—good guys catching bad guys—but even those were repetitive, predictable, and shallow.  And for what?  To kill time in the evening?  Why did I watch that garbage when I could have been reading good books, learning something worthwhile, or helping around the house?

Unfortunately, I was in a marriage once many moons ago where the television dominated the household the moment he walked through the door.  It stayed on until bedtime, a constant drone that filled every corner of the evening.  And even then, the bedroom television (yes, the senseless bedroom television) often blared until 11:30 PM.  That kind of environment was never for me.  I complained, he questioned why I wouldn’t watch because I’d have to have something to talk about at work in the morning with my co-workers.  I replied that I talked to my co-workers about work, not some stupid television program; that’s what I was paid for— work!  I tried to carve out pockets of quiet, busying myself with anything that felt less corrosive, but the noise was relentless, and the contrast between what I longed for and what surrounded me grew sharper with time.

Now that I have been away from television entirely for a good eighteen years, I don’t miss any part of it.  I couldn’t tell you what the latest shows are, or even if there are any worthwhile.  Yes, I still own a television, and I’ve used it to stream old movies from time to time, but even that has gone by the wayside for Lent this year, and I may not return to it afterward.  I don’t miss it.  I don’t crave it.  Its absence feels like fresh air.

And then there is social media—another thorn I am trying to remove.  It is astonishing how easily it lures, distracts, and scatters the mind. Even when I think I am using it “responsibly,” it has a way of pulling me into trivialities, arguments, or endless scrolling.  It promises connection but often delivers agitation.  It promises information but often makes noise.  It promises community but often fosters comparison and restlessness. I am working slowly but steadily, to loosen its grip.

Over time, these renunciations—vapid music, insipid television, thieving social media—have revealed something deeper than mere preference.  They dull the mind, yes, but more importantly, they crowd the soul.  By tossing them aside, I have begun to see the shape of my interior life gradually reclaimed.  What once felt “normal” now feels foreign, and what once seemed harmless now appears hollow.  I find that the less I cling to the secular world, the more interior freedom I gain.  This is not withdrawal but refinement: a quiet choosing of what leads me toward God and a holy life and away from the emptiness and noise that once filled my days.  In that choice, I am discovering a steadier, simpler, more meaningful, and far happier way to live. I write more, I pray more, I read more, I use my life better.

 

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The Poverty of Perpetual Anger.

There is a particular sadness in watching people who live in a constant state of anger, and I see this quite a lot in my neighborhood, and especially since 2020.  Their anger is not the righteous anger that rises to defend the vulnerable, but the chronic, simmering kind; the kind that becomes a personality, a worldview, a permanent narrowing of the soul.  Some of these people turn ugly and violent when they are cordially greeted by neighbors.  These are people who treat every encounter as a contest, every disagreement as a threat, every difference as a personal insult.  Perhaps they believe they are defending themselves, but in truth they are defending the walls that imprison them.

Anger becomes their only vocabulary.  They speak it fluently, instinctively, even proudly, and peppered heavily with vulgar and filthy words.  But beneath that lies a deep poverty of spirit.  A person who must always be angry and offensive is a person who has forgotten how to be free and kind.

The tragedy is not merely that they harm others—though they do.  The deeper tragedy is what they lose within themselves without realizing it.

  • They lose the ability to be surprised by goodness.
  • They lose the capacity for joy that comes from generosity.
  • They lose the peace that only humility can give.
  • They lose the richness of a larger world than their own reflection.

They trade all of this for the brittle satisfaction of being “right” and boorish, even when that “rightness” isolates them.  They probably do not realize that the fortress they build to keep others out is the same fortress that keeps them in.

My sadness for them is not schmaltzy.  It is not the soft sadness of pity.  It is the sharper sadness that comes from recognizing wasted possibility.  These are people who could be expansive, curious, generous, a positive addition to the neighborhood, but instead they choose the cramped rooms of anger and rejection.  They choose to live in a world too small for any soul.  It is as though they are possessed by demons.

A life fueled by anger cannot lead to peace.  A heart closed to others cannot experience love.  A mind that rejects difference cannot grow.  They may cling to their fury and their narrowness as if these things protect them, but in the end, they protect nothing.  They only ensure that the person holding them remains untouched by the very things that make life worth living.

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The Profit That Destroys.

The question, “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” cuts to the heart of a tension that every era rediscovers: the difference between a life that looks impressive and a life that is actually worth living.  We are surrounded by metrics — influence, fame, money, reputation, achievement, status — that promise satisfaction but often deliver only more insatiable hunger.  The question forces us to confront a truth we instinctively know: a person can win by every external measure and still feel hollow inside, a dried-up husk of a person.

Modern culture is skilled at rewarding the wrong things.  It celebrates accumulation, visibility, and speed.  It teaches us to optimize our schedules, polish our image, and chase the next milestone.  None of these pursuits are inherently harmful, but they become dangerous when they eclipse the quieter, more essential work of becoming a whole human being.  A person can spend decades climbing a ladder only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Losing oneself rarely happens in a dramatic collapse. More often, it happens gradually, when convenience replaces integrity, when ambition overrides relationships, when the greedy pursuit of More! More! More! crowds out the pursuit of meaning.  The world applauds these compromises; our inner life does not.  The cost is subtle but real: a thinning of character, a shrinking of joy, a sense that life is happening faster than we can live it.

To gain the world is easy.  It requires only that we follow the current cultural expectation.  To keep oneself intact is harder.  It demands reflection, boundaries, and the courage to choose depth over display, but only one of these paths leads to a life that feels like one’s own.

In the end, the question remains a challenge to every generation: what good is success if it costs you the very person you were meant to become?  The world offers many rewards, but none of them are worth the loss of yourself and your eternal spirit.

 

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