Vanity of Vanities
I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives. All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun. So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly; for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.
- Ecclesiastes 2:3,10-13
The 4th of July usually is a fun time for me. In the past I had BBQs at my house and in recent years I went to other family member's houses for BBQs. This 4th of July was different though, I didn't do anything at all. No one that I knew was having a BBQ and I wasn't organizing one. So I sat at home and watched TV. I ended up watching the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on TV. I wanted to go see it live, considering I like 8 blocks away from it. However, I woke up too late. And when I watched it on TV, there were TONS of people waiting out there.
So I watched as Kobayashi destroyed the competition... again. He ate 53 1/2 hot dogs. I can't even eat 3 in one sitting. It's amazing that he can actually do that, we all have interesting talents that we just need to cultivate. With the events that just occurred still fresh in my mind, I visited an online forum that I frequent and a thread about the event was made. It had various pictures and commentary about what happened. A user in the forum posted a comment that has stuck with me ever since:
I want to show this to the starving kids in Africa.
That hit me like a ton of bricks. Here we have a guy stuffing 53 hot dogs down his throat as "sport" and a kid in Africa would just like 1. Here we are a plentiful nation revelling in our excess... again. Here I am watching him on TV when I could be out feeding the homeless. There is the guy down the street stuffing burgers and hot dogs from his BBQ and he won't give passersby any because he doesn't know him. Here we are as a nation rushing to the Chinese buffet eating way more than we need, but yet we quickly switch the channel when we see the "Feed the children" commercial. The scripture "To whom much is given much is required" comes right to mind. I've been evaluating just how much excess I've been living in for some time now, trying to see if I could make a fair excess/non-excess boundary for my life. One person in the thread laughed at the comment, that forum is known for saracastic jokes. So it is very possible that the person who made that comment was just saying it in a sarcastic manner.. I don't know, but after reading that statement, I realize that some things in my life need to change, I just need to figure out the how and what.
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