the achievement approach

If an urban hub is anything it is a place where people intend to achieve.  It is here that we make our bid for power and recognition.  This is basically about acquiring and deploying vast sums of money.

We erect skyscrapers.  We live in penthouses and lofts.  We create retail outlets for the fundamental and the fabulous.  We build empires for trading finance.  We mount marketing campaigns of military scale.  We reign over kingdoms of health providers.  We design feasts for enhancing prestige.  We make artifacts which provide for power.

 

Armies of people are employed.  Still more people are expected to pay in order to play, buy, use, show or win.  Surely all this is significant.  If I am in charge of thousands of people, I am important; that must have meaning.

The teacher whose writings we are following tried things this way too.  "I undertook great projects."  The list that follows is impressive in its range:  everything from engineering to entertainment.  And he enjoyed it.  "My heart took great delight in all my labour, and this was the reward for all my toil.  This life of achievement often feels extremely satisfying.


But at the end of it all, with the most impressive wealth and position in his city, he finds that he is no further forward:  "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun."  This is the problem.  There comes a time when the most concrete achievements suddenly seem insubstantial.  They are so impressive in every arena, except in the place where we are searching for the essence of our being, for inward completeness.