Daily Meditation: Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Activities - for each of them weigh the gains and the losses

04/20/2004

In their later years, when men and women take stock of their lives, if they are honest they recognise that they have wasted their energy, their health and their beauty in activities which were not worthwhile. Of course, they have derived a few advantages from them, but if they put all this on the divine scales, they see that the little they have gained does not compensate for the wealth they have lost. Unfortunately, human beings make this type of calculation much too late. When they want to obtain money, glory or knowledge, they never place the losses these acquisitions will entail on the other side of the scale. Perhaps they will get what they want, but a few years later we find them in clinics or psychiatric hospitals, unable to eat, drink, or to take pleasure in life, because their nervous systems have broken down. Then they realise the value of what they have lost and say: ‘If only I had known!' But it is too late; they should have thought about it much earlier!