The older I become I find what truly matters…and what I really want for my birthday.
If you watch people you can see what they value. For many you would have to conclude that there is a constant need for the new, better, and more…things. The insatiable desire to prove oneself through accumulation. Success is making sure my mountain of stuff is the biggest, or at least as big as the Jones’. “If my house doesn’t get bigger, what will people think”? “If I can’t have a new car, what does that say about my success.”?
I’ve lived long enough today (oh yeah its my 44th birthday) to begin to see how empty this is…maybe not today, maybe not for a long time. But one day when I get “old” my values will surely change. That new car that I can’t drive will mean so little. That 4000sq ft house where I can’t climb the stairs just won’t matter. And if I have spent my life amassing the more, I will sit in a cold room full of what I treasured and find emptiness all around.
Too many people forget to buy stock in life’s most precious commodity – people…relationships. Instead we trade people in like we trade in cars, about every two years we are on to the next person. Leaving behind us a wake of unforgiveness and broken relationships. “Well you don’t know what they did to me. I can’t forgive that”. But one day you will wish you had.
Beyonce is right, “I can have another you in a minute”. The difference is that I want to keep them all. So I will choose to love and rejoice, and in the end maybe an “enemy” will come to say, “Thanks for loving me, even when I didn’t love you”.
I want to be that guy who won’t leave you. And even if you leave me, I want you to know that I’ll always be waiting.
So as I sit here at 44 I am evaluating life and success by a different standard – How many people?
How many lives have I purchased with the currency of love?
How many debts have I written off in forgiveness?
How many service calls will be available because way back when I was there?
How many customers will be in my shop when it is time to close this store?
How many hands will hold my hand when I’m letting go?
This is where my treasure is…Happy Birthday to Me.
4 responses so far ↓
martha // October 15, 2009 at 1:29 pm |
As long as we truly stay close and study we can’t help but love and follow inHis Footsteps, but pride does divide and always will it seems. May we forever seek to get over it and all will come to order.
SUZANNE // October 15, 2009 at 3:40 pm |
Well said PB!!!! Happy Birthday!!!
raginggenius // October 15, 2009 at 6:12 pm |
I love what you say about relationships, people and love and when it comes to people, you are right, we trade in or up too easily. I’m not so sure about assuming what is important to people by what they have. God blesses some with much and just because they have it all (those things that you mentioned) it doesn’t mean that they love the Lord any less or are any less giving, or that they care anyless for the relationships that the have as opposed to someone who doesn’t have lots of stuff. We all know what assuming does and I think we do that way too much. I have been to your home, what would you have me assume? I could draw the exact same conclusion if I didn’t actually know who you are and how you love.
Mary Lou // October 16, 2009 at 1:03 pm |
Brad, I couldn’t have stated it better myself.
As an old person, people become my passion – thank God.
Happy Birthday, you’re getting there very nicely.