Tuesday, November 29, 2016

The Seven Deadly Sins and Gratitude

I've had a lot of experience with chronically angry people (I was raised with one). I have found they're angry because their lives are not perfect. Not surprisingly they're very critical of others. It's always someone else's fault, not theirs.

Anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I have also found that anyone who suffers from any of them, chronically, never has any gratitude.

And without gratitude you can never be happy. As Meister Eckhardt once said, "If the only prayer you ever say is 'thank you,' it will be enough."

I've also noticed that those sin is lust tend to be weak and cowardly, and those whose sin is gluttony (in the sense of sex and drugs) tend to be superficial and flit from experience and experience.

I've never any of them show any gratitude

I've sometimes thought fear and deceit should be two more of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I've mentioned before you cannot successfully deceive others until you've first deceive yourself, and it's easier to deceive yourself than deceive others. And for some who deceive themselves and others, it's chronic.

My particular sin tends to be sloth ("sin" actually means "missing the mark" and comes from “hamartia,” which is an archery term).

I am reminded of an Aesop's fable known as "The Wolf and the Crane."

A Wolf had been gorging on an animal he had killed, when suddenly a small bone in the meat stuck in his throat and he could not swallow it. He soon felt terrible pain in his throat, and ran up and down groaning and groaning and seeking for something to relieve the pain. He tried to induce every one he met to remove the bone. "I would give anything," said he, "if you would take it out." At last the Crane agreed to try, and told the Wolf to lie on his side and open his jaws as wide as he could. Then the Crane put its long neck down the Wolf's throat, and with its beak loosened the bone, till at last it got it out. "Will you kindly give me the reward you promised?" said the Crane. The Wolf grinned and showed his teeth and said: "Be content. You have put your head inside a Wolf's mouth and taken it out again in safety; that ought to be reward enough for you."

Gratitude and greed go not together.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said.

We're living in a world that is just guaranteed to make people miserable. Greed, envy, keeping up with the Joneses, entitlement. One of the fastest paths to happiness is gratitude and understanding you are entitled to nothing. Immediately everything you do have becomes a blessing, so your world grows abundant and full of gifts, rather than small and based on scarcity and fear.