Chasing After the Wind
I was browsing and updating medical uniforms posts at Pulse Uniform’s facebook account and saw this post by one of our friends. “Children with special needs don’t have an illness, so there is no cure and it’s not contagious. They want what we all want – to be accepted.” –Lyn
For a while, I was all too busy with work that all other things simply were shadows at the background. But all of a sudden, I got struck and was made to contemplate on how much effort and time is being spent by many people just to fit in the life they want to live. But is it worth it all? At the end of the day, do you feel genuine happiness?
A special child may have been less fortunate than people born with no physical and psychological defects. However, not worrying about money, power and prestige, that most people strive to get, they are freed from so many pressures in life, from the consequences of wrong decisions, from mistrust that abound, and from spending all of the time trying to pursue elusive satisfaction.
Special children get to spend more time with their loved ones, and enjoy the care of people with genuine concern for them. Great responsibilities and material things don’t put pressure on them. And those who want to gain riches through crooked ways don’t bother their sleep. So what is behind money, power, and prestige that special children can’t simply uncover?
Greek historian Xenophon, of the fourth century B.C.E., wrote down the comments of a poor man who had become rich: “Why, do you actually suppose. . . that the more I own, the more happily I live? You are not aware,” he went on, “that it gives me not one whit more pleasure to eat and drink and sleep now than it did when I was poor. My only gain from having so much is that I am obliged to take care of more, distribute more to others, and have the trouble of looking after more than I used to have. For now many domestics look to me for food, many for drink, and many for clothes, while some need doctors; and one comes to me with a tale about sheep attacked by wolves, or of oxen killed by falling over a precipice, or to say that some disease has broken out among the cattle. And so it looks to me. . . as if I had more trouble now through possessing much than I used to have from possessing little.”
Is there genuine happiness at all? Not so much.
Money, power and prestige can give joy to people at first, but in the long run, what they only get is the burden in making them grow greater. And so, the joy they once enjoyed has become a job persistently pressing on.
Would you then chase after the wind, or simply enjoy what it brings?
