The only antidote for greed is to look inside our soul and understand the sole purpose we were brought to life in the first place. I heard these words spoken by an abbot recently and it got me thinking. Mankind has been battling greed for as long as we have been in existance. I've come across stories of people who wanted to make their first million say at the age of 30 but even after making tens of millions of dollars still feel the insatiable need to make more.
I get carried away with life sometimes. When I first carved out my career plan, I wanted to work so that I can live. Comfortably. But on hindsight, I now find that I live to work. I let myself succumb to the rigours at work that I wonder what is the whole purpose of doing them. I am not rolling in the big sum. Neither am I getting anywhere in the job. I seemed to have lost my sense of purpose.
I do realise now that I have to go back to the very roots of my soul. Why am I here? What do I want in life? I can answer my second question almost immediately. I wanted money. Still want to. Money brings happiness. And joy. And everything that I could possibly want. But the next question to ask is how much is enough? How long does it take to get enough? Am I ever going to feel satisfied? I became a little frightened when I could ask more questions than I could ever answer. Terrified that I am now stuck in this vicious cycle called life. The recent tragedy that involved a colleague of mine was enough to remind me that life is precious. Too precious to let greed from ever taking over the reins of life. My life. Information about the 7 Deadly Sins that I got off the Wikipedia. Don't be too quick to throw it aside. Just look at the facts and draw parallels from it.
The "Seven Deadly Sins"', also known as the "Capital Vices" or "Cardinal Sins", are a classification of vices that were originally used in early Christian teachings to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen man's tendency to sin. The Roman Catholic Church divided sin into two principal categories: "venial", which are relatively minor, and could be forgiven through any sacrament of the Church, and the more severe "capital" or "mortal" sins, which, when committed, destroyed the life of grace, and created the threat of eternal damnation unless either absolved through the sacrament of confession, or otherwise forgiven through perfect contrition on the part of the penitent. Beginning in the early 14th century, the popularity of the Seven deadly sins as a theme among European artists of the time eventually helped to ingrain them in many areas of Christian culture and Christian consciousness in general throughout the world.
Listed in the same order used by both Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century AD, and later by Dante Alighieri in his epic poem The Divine Comedy, the Seven deadly sins are as follows: Luxuria (extravagance, later lust), Gula (gluttony), Avaritia (greed), Acedia (sloth), Ira (wrath), Invidia (envy), and Superbia (pride).
Each of The Seven Deadly Sins has an opposite among the corresponding Seven holy virtues (sometimes also referred to as the Contrary Virtues).
The identification and definition of the Seven deadly sins over their history has been a fluid process and the idea of what each of the seven actually encompass has evolved over time. This process has been aided by the fact that they are not referred to in either a cohesive or codified manner in the Bible itself, and as a result other literary and ecclesiastical works referring to the Seven deadly sins were instead consulted as sources from which definitions might be drawn. Part II of Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, has almost certainly been the best known source since the Renaissance, though many later interpretations and versions, especially those of the more conservative and Pentecostal Protestant denominations, have instead tended to portray the consequence for those guilty of committing one or more of these sins as being eternal torment in Hell, rather than possible purification through penance in Purgatory. |
