Audrey stepped away from the dinner table to slice some bread and while she was gone, I noticed Talitha sitting in her high chair just a plate away from where Audrey had been sitting.
Tali hadn't shown much interest in the dinner on her plate, but the food on her mom's plate? Now that's an entirely different story.
No sooner had her mother left the table than Tali began shoveling food from her mom's plate into her own mouth. If she had possessed a larger mouth I'm sure she would have engaged in this nefarious activity with even greater abandon.
What is it about human nature that invites discontent with what we do have and ravenous appetite for what we don't?
This little poem seems to capture the essence of the quandary:
As a rule,
Man's a fool.
When it's hot,
He wants it cool.
When it's cool,
He wants it hot.
Always wanting
What is not.
Never wanting
What he's got.
When the subject of the "want" and "don't want" dilemma is found in identical food whose only difference is the location on two different plates at the dinner table, we think it rather amusing.
But when the subject shifts to less discernable irony, the world has a way of clouding our view to keep us if it can from the truth that would otherwise set us free from chains of envy, even jealousy.
What a blessed antidote is found in the two great commandments:
1. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
2. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
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