Forgive me, one and all, for I too have wallowed in the sin of "Greed."
How could it not be so when it's too easy to be greedy, these days, for ever so many more of is, in so many different ways. Because, I think, greed is an essential aspect of addiction itself. And of course, nothing sells like an addiction. Whether you are trying to sell others, or yourself, on a particular new choice of action.
And speaking as a child born into what has always seemed to me to be an addictive confluence of blood lines, with both my folks being great candidates of "poster children" status for a "have you seen this missing addictive?" campaign; speaking with that kind of pedigree, I think I can safely say that I am also a very greedy person.
I could start with this observation: What about my own problem with "how much is enough."
That is to say my problem with feeling inadequate to this task, and always feeling I'm not doing enough. An absurdity, of course, to begin with as, how could you possibly calculate what would be enough from this side of "it's nowhere near getting done." But then, that doesn't necessarily stop you from becoming addicted to the anguish in either the "unfairness" of it all, that you should be saddled with such a burden, or, at the other extreme, the assumed deification of being a martyr enough to finally win the impossible mantle of "deserving" the deification in the first place (if you could just survive that one more, ultimate, mea culpa, "cleansing" test of pain).
I have to fight a continuing struggle for not living life too close to too many edges. Because, of course, life at the edge of "too far," once you get used to the pain, and the loneliness, you can't help but want to see, and know, so ever much more; to feel the attainment of ever greater levels of complexity, of not only understanding, but also of making new expressive use of these gifts of understanding, as well; perhaps to be, at some point, the one who realizes the expression that can only be expressed in a wholly knew, objective layer of reality, outside this one; becoming something new, in that new reality, in the process; because the realization, and the grasping, automatically re create you as the new thing that has always been able to do that kind of grasping; because we exist in an entirety of infinite potential.
It is, of course, a part of the package of human frailties. Frailties that also have an amazing ability to leverage each other, for a bewildering array of possible, positive and negative, effects, at the same time; to which the net, resulting effect, always depends greatly on the physical meaning space situations we perceive, moment to moment, and which then beg for certain, hopefully informed, choices to be made, so as to be able to continue making choices, in the first place.
You have to understand, though, that even personalities are complex sets of interlocking, iterative systems of self preserving belief. And they too have, at any given moment, limited carrying capacities. Just as the biological system, also complexly interlinked, has. Do too much of one passion, or another, too soon, and you will change too much of what you aspire to be as far as "Dynamic Balance" is concerned.
So much more capability now. So much more to tempt us. Now that so many of our faculties have been extended, and super powered; creating new instrumentality within of all 3 of the meaning spaces we exist in ("Physical Meaning Space", "Mind Meaning Space", and "Body Meaning Space"); instrumentality with ever more boundary crossing effects than ever before, so that what we think, do and feel, spreads out from us, as one rock affecting many ponds, in expanding rings of either push, or pull. And all of that interacting with the same thing possibly coming from every other sentient meaning processor out there, trying to make their own informed, or not so informed, choices. As they, too, face all of the growing list of temptations.
The bottom line here is certainly what this means for what we should have as a New Year's Resolution. For me it it what it has always been, as I am a personality made of up opposites who must do what the world must do, which is to never give up on trying to mediate a compromise between whatever any individual extreme might tempt you with. Mediate a compromise that respects both the need to attend to the "here and now," in practical ways, but also to the "what could be," in needs that lay beyond the merely "practical." To mediate the balance between working hard, and feeling good. Where both of those concepts have real, deep, meanings, for all those willing to be deeply involved to make the compromises work, and also feel right.
So I would urge you to resolve to never give up trying to mediate; not only the differences percolating around you in the actions of others, but your own conflicting struggles with the waring differences within yourself. Only with this will we all be able to heal, both from the outside in, as well as from the inside out.
Images for the different ways to be too greedy
Images for living life on the edge of "too far"
