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Chuck Colson: Life Is More than Money, Power, and Pleasure

Charles Colson tells the following story about his home town of Naples, Florida, which he calls "one of the garden spots of the world."

It's an absolute nirvana for all golfers, and they all come there. They're all CEOs of major corporations, and they retire to Naples, and this is "it"—twenty-seven golf courses and miles of sparkling beach and the best country clubs. I watch these guys; they're powerful people. They have this New York look on their face; they're determined. But now, all of a sudden, they start measuring their lives by how many golf games they can get in.
I often say to them, "Do you really want to live your life counting up the number of times you chase that little white ball around those greens?" And they kind of chuckle, but it's a nervous chuckle, because in six months they've realized how banal their lives are, and they've got beautiful homes—castles—and when they get bored with that, they build a bigger castle, and they're miserable. The object of life is not what we think it is, which is to achieve money, power, pleasure. That's not the holy grail. The object of life is the maturing of the soul, and you reflect that maturing of the soul when you care more for other people than yourself.

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