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Today, as I passed the mailbox on the way home from class, I questioned why I always want it to contain something for me. I thought for a while about how satisfying it feels to have something in the mail or in the process of being shipped to me. I thought further into how consumerist I am and how easy it is to spend money on toys just to make myself feel special. Then I realized how odd these feelings really are. I gain a minute sense of satisfaction from that stuff. They may be odd feelings but are they uncommon?
My conclusion is that my consumerist ways are a result of a yearning for significance. I feel satisfied today if some cool new gadget is on the way. But what is the use of that gadget really? Is it to distract me from the real issue that I am desperate for significance?
I’m not the only one that does this. The common theme of our American society is not freedom, it is slavery. Our silly little society is so entrapped by this desire to [feel] significant that we need more stuff. This tendency mirrors a serious addiction or even mental illness. Mentally ill people try to fix problem X with solution Y. That is insanity. Sane people know that only solution X can fix problem X. Get it? Addicted people get their “fix” from their very problem. That is insanity too, folks.
I think the bottom line is that this society and not just ours, is yearning desperately for something or someone to tell us that we are significant. People want attention! When we don’t feel significant we look desperately for something to please us, something fun, something that feels good or makes us look like we’ve got it all together when in all honesty, we’ve lost it all.
This raises some very fundamental questions. Where are we meant to get our sense of significance from? Were we meant to get all the attention? We were not made to gain significance from stuff. Material junk will never make you full. That is fact. Secondly, to what degree should we receive our significance from other people? This may rock the boat a bit but as soon as you base your significance on another person’s thoughts of you, you are in the wrong. Although we all do this, we were not built that way. Could this be a major root to depression? What about suicide? If we gain our personal value from others we will never see ourselves as what we really are.
Like I said earlier our tendency to feed these lies has enslaved us but [what is freedom]? I think the answer to that question is the answer to all of the above. The truth is that we are meant to receive our self worth, our significance from our Creator. What is freedom? Our creator paid the price of His sons’ life to free us from all of this nonsense. That’s the answer, the stars and sunset and rainbows are the subtle or not so subtle, reminders that you need not yearn for significance. That was given to you before you ever lived.
I think our purpose has been abandoned. If we spent our time reflecting on the truth of our existence we could be free from the lies that drive us to a desperate yearning for empty significance. You could be alive!
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