If I live life as some barter system, I will in fact never have given anything away except the opportunity to really live.

In the vast majority of cases, what I ‘need’ is actually what I ‘want’ dressed in clever disguise.

We repeatedly discard the very things that we ‘need’ in the maddening pursuit of that which we ‘want.’ And if this behavior persists, in the end we will stand holding neither.

What I ‘want’ for my life is often not what I ‘need’ for my life, although I feel that I ‘need’ to talk myself into making it a ‘want.

I rigorously lament all of the many things that I don’t have. But in this self-imposed and rather lively pity-party to which I’ve invited myself, what I forget are the resources I do have that equip me to obtain what I don’t.

If my prayers have devolved into being nothing more than reciting a list of things that I want, I might as well just go to the mall.

Most everything that I ‘need’ can be found in most everything that I threw away in my mad rush to get everything that I ‘wanted,’ for the eyes of greed are blind to the treasures of life.

In my impatience I become convinced that this desire of mine should have been fulfilled yesterday, when it belongs to a tomorrow that yesterday would have killed had I had my way.

To be blessed and yet permit gluttony to blind me to the blessings is to banish myself to a life of unrelenting poverty even though I might be utterly engulfed in the embrace of a million marvelous blessings.