“For the love of money is the root of all evil. While coveting after money, some have strayed from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
When this article is published, the Superbowl will be long over, a new champion crowned, and life will have moved on from all the annual football hoopla for one more year. But, presently, as I write this, I’m sitting at my friend Mike’s house, waiting for the big game’s opening festivities, where I’ve just learned the cost of a barebones trip to actually see this year’s Superbowl in person was around $6000, which included the cost of a ticket, parking, and food!
$6000! Just to see a game! While I love watching the Superbowl on TV every year, and while I do have various teams I’ve supported over the years in football and other sports too, I can think of a million things these days I’d rather do with $6000 than spend it on a sporting event. Truly, I think if I even had won tickets to this year’s Superbowl, I would have sold them and used the money on something far more practical in my life. Yet, I know I wouldn’t have been able to say that earlier in my life.
How often I spent money on the dumbest of things in my life looking for happiness is countless at this point. Most of those superficial purchases generally ended with me asking myself why I had wasted my money on it. Probably the silliest of which came after my father died, where I bought a brand-new Acura Integra GSR to cope with his passing and had parts of it dipped in 14K gold! Yes, I really did that. (SMH!)
If there’s one thing I’ve absolutely learned in this life in the year I’m about to finally turn 50 is that money never brings about any long-lasting happiness. If anything, it has always created for me an itch that no amount of scratching was ever able to take away.
While I’m quite sure that some great memories were probably made for those who spent $6000 to see this year’s Superbowl, especially if their team ended up winning, in the end, it, like anything else one lavishly spends money on, only will create a drive for more. An endless search for one pleasure after another in this world, where that drive itself becomes far more important than anything else, where having faith, sharing unconditional love, and even caring about others becomes second to simply pleasing oneself…
Dear God, help me to always remember that all the physical pleasures of this world will never bring about true happiness, something I’ve seen has only ever come in seeking You and in serving others rather than myself.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
Great post. As you inferred, spending like that leads to more. That feels like chasing the original high. As a shopaholic, I know it’s another outer manifestation of my inner search for worth .