I grew up in a hand-to-mouth family but I truly never felt the lack of anything.  My Mom and especially my Dad were both unconditional lovers.  What could have been better than that?

As a father and now, a grandfather, I feel the responsibility to pass that annuity on, while taking every opportunity to remind my progeny that we are among the lucky ones, never having wanted for a meal or shelter or a clean glass of water.  Most of the people I know and those within the sphere that I travel are, by that definition, lucky as well.  So, why, at this frenzied “holiday’ time of year, is there so much underlying sadness amidst all of the sappy nostalgia, interminably dumb music and months-long ad campaigning for our saved and future dollars?

Since I’m not a proponent of the rhetorical question, here’s an answer:

Some may wrap the last weeks of the year in a celebratory religious ribbon, but enterprise, and the search for some version of enrichment of life on Earth, far surpasses the concern for anyone’s eternal soul.  We are a planet whereupon wealth, real or perceived, is the final word in any debate or decision of note.  It is horded by those who possess it, coveted by those who don’t and used openly and cruelly by the haves to maintain and widen the divide.

I have never had the opportunity to engage an all-wise guru by a Nepalese mountain stream, in search of cross-legged, one-on-one enlightenment, but my guess is that he/she would giggle, Dalai Lama-like, by the absurdity of it all.  We live on a miraculously sustainable planet, capable of easily providing food, water and shelter to all of its present 7.4B inhabitants, yet, 3B people live in abject poverty and nearly half of those, (1.3B), are in dire, daily risk of starvation.  Somehow, the evolutionary prize, granting advanced cognition and the ability to reason, was, almost from the emergence of homo erectus, overshadowed by the overt propensity for the “survival of the fittest”.  Greed and power became the coveted collateral that gave rise to feudalism, religion and politics, each with its unique delineation of who shall have and who shall not.  With few exceptions, global societal models encourage us to long for far more than we need and to eagerly pursue it, often to the detriment of others as we deck the halls, fa-la-la and merry, merry, ho!  I hope it’s not too late for us to do better.