My Portion

Is there any task more difficult than distinguishing our wants from our needs? We tell ourselves, day after day, that our wants are our needs. We want good health. We want trendy clothing. We want organic food, and pay raises, and houses with three bedrooms, two baths, and a two car garage. All that these things serve to do, however, is alleviate suffering. Somehow we imagine that we are entitled not to suffer; that nothing could be worse than suffering. How wrong we are. We need to suffer. We need to see that this world is not enough. Yet, the more we sink into our comfortable and self-satisfied lives, the harder that becomes. We all have the means to pull out of such a fruitless existence and, more importantly, to fill our lives with happiness. Not pleasure, but happiness. Pleasure comes from the things we take; happiness, from the things we are given. So, as we near St. Valentine's Day, try to put aside the false materialism of the holiday and remember those things that have been given to you: friends, family, lovers, the beauty of the world around you. These are the things that are given freely, but, in the end, are worth more than all the wealth of men.


My Portion

What portion is my own? The earth
allots a share to each at birth.
A breath of air, a place to lay
upon, and each extends the worth

we reckon by our poverty.
If all our riches were so free,
then labor would not look for pay,
nor recompense. Our currency

is other, though, and too profane.
It supplements a noble gain
with idle wealth. I will not grow
into my manhood, nor attain

a happiness beyond this old,
intrepid striving after gold,
until I learn, until I know,
the value of the things I hold

already. What I wish to take
is in my grasp. And now, to wake
from long and lazy sleep, to grope
for more than mortal hands can make,

is, in the end, my portion. Less
than this would be enough to bless
my weak endeavor with a hope
of life. I ask a small success,
and God will grant success.