(Matthew 10:39) 

And he said to them, "Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Luke 12:15) 

Whoever loses his life for my sake will gain it. (Matthew 10:39) 

Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things shall be yours as well. (Luke 12:30b-31) 

to have or to be?  

To approach the question of vocation and our personal fulfillment I am going to engage in a little simplification by painting two pictures. But before writing this off, please bear in mind that the situations I describe are real, not invented, and by simplification I mean leaving aside many of the personal and subjective attenuating circumstances so that the essence of the question will stand out more starkly, rather than distorting the question or creating a non-problem. 

Two couples. 

One is successful and ambitious for more success. They have put off having a family because their careers do not allow them to divide their attention, because their lifestyle, if it is to continue, does not allow either of them to sacrifice career and its attendant income. Lifestyle includes their midtown apartment, constant dining out, extra long hours put into their jobs, availability to be with their clients, vacations they really need because of the high stress of both their jobs, their Lexus and their Merc.  

The other couple lives in the suburbs. They already have children, and the husband was recently offered a major promotion which allowed them to toy with the idea of "moving up." They didn't do so, because there may be more children, and anyway the priority moneywise now is to put away for the kids' education (grade school, high school and college). You can tell right away in their present house that frills and luxuries are not something they go for, but once you know them you see that they do not skimp when it comes to providing opportunities for their kids: education, hobbies, music, sports... 

What surfaces in these sketches are two fundamentally different ways at looking at life, and consequently two radically different sets of goals which form the background against which particular decisions (how I will spend my time, what I will do with my raise, what place I will give money in my life...) are made. 

One life-view is centered on things, possessions, and the social status they give... This we can call the "culture of having." The other is centered on the human person, growth as a person, making each person (me and the other) a better person in himself. This is the "culture of being."  

One life-view seeks to have more, the other to be more. 

true individualism 

Contrary to what is usually said and thought, true Christian life does more for individualism than materialism and consumerism do.  

When we focus on having more, especially in our age of mass production, we are almost immediately relieved of our individuality - it is absorbed by the masses that mill around us in the mall. We want to have the same as others, or something better than our neighbor but just like someone more glamorous. We chase after the latest available product, one drop in the massive wave of consumers descending on the latest model car, or supercharged video machine, and more than ready to drop these in favor of the premium model as soon as our purse or our loan officer permits. We become anonymous statistics affecting the consumer spending index, nothing more. More often than not we do not even use the things we buy to their fullest potential; there are options that are snapped up in car showrooms which only make a difference at speeds you wouldn't want to drive at anyway - yet urged on by the relentless and fickle drums of the advertisers we become the buying slaves of their novelty.  

When our emphasis is on growth, on being more rather than having more, we open in our lives the possibility of morality; for we can then think in terms of what is good and right and thus exert our mastery over things. From among the magnificent variety and quality of goods that the consumer economy provides we are then able to choose those that serve the purpose of our growth as persons, and we are also able to say no to those things that will hinder or prohibit our attaining the goals we have set for ourselves. 

A person seeking to "be" more knows that not every recent blockbuster or bestseller needs to be seen or read, and some he would actually do well to avoid since they undermine his principles and his sense of morality and human integrity. And on the other hand many classics are extremely beneficial to us and we should seek them out even though no one is pushing them.  

Such a person concentrates on what is important in relation to the kind of person he wants to be, on the values that make a person human, and the responsibilities he has taken upon himself (towards God and towards others). He consequently exerts more independence as regards material things and social pressure than the man whose whole focus is on having more. 

happiness and self-realization 

Now to go a little deeper, did you ever hear someone who has made a trip to an undeveloped country express his amazement in more or less the following terms: I can't get over it, those people don't have anything, they live in shacks with no plumbing, and yet they seem so happy? 

It is not always true, but it does bring out a point. 

In our society we have made the connection, which is false, between having and being happy. That is the principal way they have of selling things to us. Would you buy a new car if you thought it was going to bore you? So advertising makes the connection for us: buy this and with it you buy your guaranteed happiness. And we swallow it.  

Things can make life easier for us. They can lighten the burden and ease the pain. They can give a certain contentment and satisfaction, especially when there is someone around to admire our possessions and envy us. But they cannot make us happy. If they could, there would be no suicides in our affluent society, at least in its upper echelons. Nor would we need to acquire more and more of them. Nor would people still seek escape in drugs.  

Happiness and fulfillment are much deeper and they are directly related to our integrity, as human persons and as Christians. That is why Christ could say that the person who stood up for his faith and underwent persecution for his faith would be happy.  

Happiness and fulfillment are not based then on what we have, but on what we find when we look inside ourselves and see what kind of person we are. We have a soul that will live beyond the grave. It guarantees that our subconscious will always seek realities that go beyond the grave, the riches that thieves cannot rob and moths cannot eat, and we will be terribly uneasy and dissatisfied if we find that all we have as persons is a few baubles subject to market fluctuations, that cannot even guarantee us the physical life and health we need to enjoy them anyway. This is why the rich and famous can have their depressions along with the rest of us.  

We reach fulfillment (and true happiness) as human beings in striving honestly to be what we should be as human persons: in striving to be good, honest, moral, responsible. As Christians we reach fulfillment and happiness in striving to be what we should be as Christians, living as he would have us live, being faithful to him, and in doing what he wants us to do with our life.  

However, neither human nor Christian fulfillment and happiness comes "naturally" to us though our nature clamors for both, paradoxical as this may seem. 

homework 

You should now be able to answer for yourself a familiar question: how could Christ possibly promise us happiness if to follow him we have to give up so much?