Buy For Happiness (A Short Story By Erwin Wensley)

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“When one does not find one’s rest in oneself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.”  – François de La Rochefoucauld

“Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

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It is something

Many will never do

Focusing on deceit

Masks, costumes they call fashion

Always something to possess

Buy, buy, buy…

 

Adding “friends”

Like charms on a bracelet

While never knowing anyone

Acquire, display, alone

There is always more

To accumulate, fill the hole

 

The need of the masses

To satiate their emptiness

Feed the hunger for what

You will never be able to purchase

Only those who will try to sell you

What they themselves do not have

 

It isn’t the one with the most toys

Who will win in the end

A black hole consumes

Its appetite limitless

Sucking up all vital forces

You, gone, without a trace

 

Bisous,

Léa

Treasure

 

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”   – Bob Marley

 

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”   – Erich Fromm

 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”   – Henry David Thoreau

 

*

 

Treasure

 

Despite advance studies

Money rarely trickled down my path

Choosing Mental Health

Over a lucrative career

Despite any talents or skill

The bills remain a struggle

Yet I have the most beautiful sky

Just outside my window

A grand chorus of birds

Sing me awake each day

Summertime, sung to sleep

By frogs and crickets

 

Your latest acquisition

Phones, laptops, automobiles

Will be an albatross

In the not too distant future

And advertisers will tell you

What you NEED to make you

Happy – another purchase

Piled upon local landfill

As you move on to your next

Vital acquisition

While I gather lavender, rosemary,

Figs, almonds and know

How truly rich I am 

 

 

The family said I would never

Have any wealth – be one of them

Would not know what to do with it

Would give it away

There may be some truth to that

I’ve always found others

Who needed it more than me

Yet I’ve more than I

Dreamed could be mine

Surrounded by beauty

In the embrace of my community

Some things cannot be bought

At last, I have come home

*

Bisous,

Léa