From my earliest youth, I always wanted to hold the world in my hand and subject its fate to my will. One year I asked Santa Clause for a globe and was a little disappointed when I received an inflatable beach ball globe, complete with stand. This somehow didn’t measure up to my standards. The next year I forcefully restated my desire and the result was much improved in terms of material gain. However, the result of my inner disposition was not improved. On Christmas morning I emerged in the living room in my socks and with my hair in sleepy disarray to find my ultimate desire waiting for me and, unlike so many Christmases before, I felt not at all thrilled. It was my first lesson in the emptiness of material gain. A sense of the void that one has within oneself that is never fulfilled by acquiring things of any type. Augustine put it far better than I in his famous quote, “You made us for yourself oh God, and we are restless until we rest in you.”

The feeling I got when I first won an item on Ebay was not ultimately unlike the feeling I got when I hit it big at the casino. I was not very excited at the casino mainly because, and I’m convinced of this, the establishment had drugged me. I was awake for almost thirty-five hours in a hazy mental stew from whatever it was they put in their drinks. The result of my win came the next time I visited the casino. Coupled with the lack of desire to order their free drinks there was also more of a desire to push the envelope, to keep going and going. That win ruined my chances of enjoying a quick trip to the slots forevermore by letting me realize that I could actually win. The stump of my cigar pointed down from that time on as I wrestled with the one armed bandit. I still lost only my pre-budgeted amount, but I always felt that I could have come out on top. This feeling kept me from getting a sense of full relaxation as I left the place, groping my pockets for perhaps a loose quarter.

When I won my first bid on Ebay I was excited. I couldn’t wait to have my object of desire in hand. I scanned the screen for a week, weighing other bids against my own, sometimes checking three or five times a day. I hunched over the computer at work while the instruments worked their wonders like automatons out of some bad science fiction movie. I would recheck the site and look at the picture of what I was trying to obtain–it seared its pleasing light-made shapes into my brain like a child who looks for the product on the shelf that is curved in nature and colored pastel, an item such as a globe. The monitor gave my face an unusual glow as I hit the last key of my e-mail password and then…my face brightened all the more when I saw the new mail informing me that I had won! The difference between the bid and the slot was that the gratification was not immediate, I now had to write a check and mail it off, wait a week or two for it to clear and then wait for the seller to get off his duff and send it along. But the post-gratification let down was similar, a slow process which set in only after the instigating event had played out its immediate effect.

In the meantime, the excitement was building as I waited for my prize. I notice a whole world out there to be bought by just a click. I started bidding on things just because they were cheap. I would lose them and not worry, going on to try the next thing. I didn’t show quite the restraint I had in the aftermath of the casino windfall. Since I had time between the knowledge of the win and the actual receipt of the object, there was lag time for the vice of gluttony to grow in my mind.

I did not spend all of my time on the computer, however. A week after I sent off my check I was already making reconnoiters to the mailroom to see if my package had arrived. I found all kinds of reasons to walk past the door with my hands clasped behind me, and eye the counter where incoming packages are stacked as my lab coat caught the wind like the cape of Darth Vader. I knew in my mind that it would be long in time until my beloved package arrived, but the urge drove me to make my visits.

When the day came I got the call over the system and, after logging off of Ebay, I bolted for the mailroom. I looked at the package, which was much smaller than expected. I had sent off for a regulator for my car once, which was about the size of a quarter and it came in a box the size of a medium suitcase. I raged at the waste to my co-workers and noted the senselessness of such exuberant packaging. When I received this package I was smitten with the opposite sensation. I had waited so long for it that the image in my mind seemed so much larger. “No matter!” I thought, “It’s what’s inside that counts.” I smuggled my trove to my lab and in solitude stooped over it like a cat over a lizard, pleased with its prey. I popped the package open and looked at my toys. They were pastel in color too, but once again the brightness did not hold sway. All the waiting was a let down just as it was on that Christmas so long ago. They also seemed so much smaller then they had on the screen, and in my mind.

Thus the thrill of Ebay faded in an opposite fashion from the casino but with the same result. In the casino what I gained was much larger than I expected and ruin my temperament for enjoying what I had by making me desirous for more. With Ebay, what I expected was large and colorful on the screen and in the anticipation, but in reality lacked its luster, and in that way ruined what I had gained. In either case I could not keep my joy because of the desire for what I did not have, even though I got what I wanted.

Even with this Gnostic revelation I continue to go to the casino and to Ebay. I do this because I believe that perhaps by going to the casino I can gain my independence of the desire to win by the same Tantric fluke that helped me realize that what I bought on Ebay was just so much junk. The only problem is that I can’t seem to recreate the success and therefore can’t overcome my desire by experience. Because of this I need to continue to patronize Ebay in order to remind me of the empty feeling I get when I receive my package in the mail, so much later than I expected. I must, for my spiritual welfare, keep doing this until I can recreate my great victories at the casino enough to overcome the desire. Thank God for the Jesuits who teach us such casuistry.

Literature