There is a cartoon in a recent issue of “The New Yorker” in which a man in a business suit is talking on the phone. We overhear him say:
“I’m working harder than I ever have, but all I get out of it is larger and larger paychecks.”
On Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” money doesn’t even make it past the second tier. (And, remember it’s a hierarchy of NEEDS, not wants.) But it is our “wants” that exert the most control so much of the time.
What we most want, it seems, is to feel whole; to have an emptiness filled up. It’s just that when we use the wrong material to fill the hole of our unmet needs – money, achievement, power, control, sex, drugs, booze – it never fills us up. Ever.
When there’s a hole inside we’ve got to fill it up with something. Better that be the hard work of love, forgiveness and healing.
It really is the only way.
