de sic transit gloria mundi

How amazing is it that we lose all sense of what is important while we run blindly after all of the crap we think we need–cars, houses, electronics, entertainment, gold, the list is endless. Not that I mind living in a world filled with all of these interesting trappings, but they are a distraction. Before we know it, however, we have lost ourselves in a sea of desire, lusting after the newest and latest gizmo, toy, or must have thing or service. This desire to have it all is neither new nor surprising. Since people have been people, we have been lusting after the next great thing–fire, the wheel, writing. Yet as the spinners spin and our lives play out before us, we are completely blind to the finite nature of our own existence, the fact that man-made things a perishable and temporal, and that there is absolutely nothing under the sun that will change those first two assertions. The Brinks truck will not come to the cemetery as you molder in your coffin and dump in your money before they close the lid. The physical, in spite of outward appearances, is temporal and will eventually pass away in spite of our intentions. We might erect monuments, put up plaques and statues, construct buildings of brick and mortar, but time will eventually tear it all down, and everything will eventually return to the dust from which it came. What will last, you ask? Sic transit gloria mundi How doth the busy bee, Dum vivimus vivamus, I stay my enemy! Emily Dickinson