Poignancy warning. I am sitting in a quiet house, sipping coffee as my husband, son, and daughter-in-law sleep. In actuality, I slept late for me and so will have less quiet time to write this. I won Free Cell and have once again been defeated at the computer chess game, but that’s hardly surprising since I’m not that good a chess player. It’s funny that I just thought of the guy who taught me to play chess all those years ago. I think I’ll check on FB and see if I can find him.

We’re planning a festive evening with the menu that I posted earlier, the kids are going to the fascinating Monkey Jungle, and if Mother Nature doesn’t lay the wind down, we’ll have to rearrange furniture so we can seat eight people inside. (Poolside dining on New Year’s Eve is such a fun thing to do.)

All in all, it’s a good day, yet I’m struggling with something that I’ve avoided trying to clarify because as often happens, it is an uncomfortable issue. The old “seven deadly sins” pretty much sums up the foundation of many human ills, although it is the one of “envy” that’s causing my reflection. There is much to envy when we focus on the material world and we are very attuned to that for a variety of reasons. We combine that with wanting to present the “right image” and when we can’t necessarily obtain, or in some cases, sustain that, it gives rise to anger or sadness. We want to “blame someone” because we haven’t gotten what we think is “fair”, or feel sad because we can’t have something in particular. It’s good to have goals, ambitions, and dreams, and as I have written about before, I firmly believe in the saying of, “Man’s reach should exceed his grasp”. If you achieve one goal or dream, sure, go ahead and reach for another. In doing so though, are you forgetting to appreciate what you have? And is the goal or dream being driven mostly by the desire to be “better” than someone else rather than to be something for yourself or for someone you care about? Is envy at the root of whatever it is you want? As a die-hard capitalist, I’m all for the house, car, travel, etc., What I am not for is racking up crippling debt to have those things and being unable to either prioritize what you want to make appropriate trade-offs or to say, “No, sorry can’t afford that.” And no, I’m not talking here about that flash of envy where you look at your losing lottery ticket and think, “Man, why couldn’t that have been me?”. And are there greedy people out there (another of those seven deadly sins) who truly don’t seem to deserve the bounty they get? Yes, as there have been since mankind came into existence.

So as this year closes and a new year is upon us, here is hoping that you attain/keep those things that are genuinely important to you.