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Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success or failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Monday, Labor Day. Starbuck’s customer seating is nearly empty this morning. Many are sleeping late today? The weekend offered special events to celebrate the end of summer and the onset of fall. The seasons belong to everyone. Change reminds us: we belong to the earth and we belong to one another. 

Lao Tsu ever the masterful teacher presents us with alternative life-strategies. The fateful choice, do I wish to create a future where money is more valuable than my happiness? I cannot have both, “have cake and eating cake too.” Another way of putting it: am I to insist upon success, or will I recognize the lessons  which come from my failures? Success is sometimes a destructive “too much”.

Do I expect others to tell me that I am Ok, happiness at the say-so of others? Is that fame? Must I be liked? How much would be enough “love” by those who do not know me at all? Ok. That is nonsensical. I conclude that money and fame are not connected at all with fulfillment.

What do I have really? Seems that I only have, the contentment suffusing me from the yet hot coffee in this cup, and the conversation that Tom and I just enjoyed. Another sip of coffee. Tom is off to his projects of the day which he mentioned to me. Immediate satisfaction from relatedness to coffee/the world and from friendships. Is this what Lao Tsu meant by: “the way things are” and “nothing lacking.”

I cannot be sure, but sometimes it feels as if, by that standard, the whole world indeed belongs to me.

This photos captured yesterday, staging at the starting line, a time and place of happiness, Great Lakes Dragaway.