Things are not what they seem

My pastor has recently given several messages based on the premise that things are not always as they seem. That is, much of what we take for a given, is less than accurate.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems, the short "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

The Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holiday season is a most wonderful time, but perversely also a time when suicides increase in frequency. Nothing, it would seem, so reminds many of us of our state of unhappiness than other peoples' happiness. And yet that itself (other peoples' happiness) is illusory. The sooner a man realizes that no man has it all together, the sooner a man will get on with his own life.

At least that's the track I'm taking. ;-)