Vanity

Vanity A poem about vanity in life inspired by Ancient Greek Wisdom As I wake up abruptly every single dawn With my body still asleep on futility’s lawn My spirit needs a fiery, enervating quick jolt To nail down my awareness with God’s divine bolt And as the day’s continuity progresses slowly My frail mind transforms my soul silently To seek our Father’s love and compassion And His heavenly treasure and full passion Oh! supreme vanity, goddess of futility You mark our short life most eloquently As you guide us with your values and premises To consider all matters without the goal of destiny For without God’s divine purpose and infinity All life ends up in the turbulent waterways of vanity Waiting, with no end, for the pleasure of happiness Disregarding all elements of ethics and human wellness Oh! Greatest vanity of glorious vanities How weak you make the old and the wise How you bond us all well with divine fate How silly you make men who think they are great Dearest God, bless us to be, in our life, mighty So that we express our goodness to all needy For without Your words we are all bereft totally Waiting our final turn in the valley of dire mortality Taking into deep consideration the following ancient Greek sayings: 1. By Aristotle: ‘Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind’. 2. By Plato: ‘Eternal time is the only truth while what happens in our world are icons of vanity of our emotions’. 3. By Empedocles: ‘You must plunge beneath your crowded thoughts and calmly contemplate the higher realities with pure, focused attention. If you do this, a state of inspired serenity will remain with you throughout your life, shaping your character and benefiting you in so many ways. But if you direct your attention instead to the trivial things most people obsess about, the silly nonsense that dulls their minds, you’ll just acquire more objects which you’ll only lose anyway’.