Desiring What Cannot Satisfy

Here are some wise words from Bernard of Clairvaux to share with your kids. He writes, “God alone can satisfy our desires. A man with a lovely wife may still look lustfully at an attractive woman. A well-dressed person wants more expensive clothes. The rich envy the richer. You can find people who already own much property and have many possessions, still striving, day in and day out, to add another field to their estates. They have a restless ambition for promotion and honors. It is not very intelligent to desire what cannot satisfy. While enjoying wealth, you keep searching for something you still lack. You run back and forth from one pleasure to another, becoming tired, but never satisfied. Eventually, we will come to say to God, ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.’ Anything else is doomed to failure. Life is too short. The long road wears us out.”