Trophies

I enjoy fooling around with online auctions.  Doing this you can, from time to time, find great deals, find hard to get items, and learn some life lessons.  I happened across a life lesson this morning.  It came in an estate auction.  Typically an estate auction is where someone has passed away and those who are responsible have to deal with all their stuff. In this specific auction there was a lot of hunting and fishing gear.  I mean a lot.  I am attracted to hunting and fishing gear in auctions.  So I began to look and discovered whoever this was they were really into fishing and hunting.  There were about 140 lots in this auction dedicated to fishing, hunting, and related activities.  Some lots contained a bundle of rods, a number of bait buckets, some rare guns, a boat, a motor and on and on.

One of the lots struck me in a different way.  It was a large box of trophies in the form of wall plaques.  These commemorated fishing tournament victories, some dating back nearly 40 years.  It was a lifetime of work and effort and time put into the science and art of catching fish.  No telling how many trophies were in the box.  One has to wonder how many events this person fished and didn't bring home the hardware.  I can tell you with a high degree of confidence there was a massive commitment in terms of time, money, effort and skill to accumulate this much stuff and all these trophies.  I can also tell you 9 days into the auction and no one cares about their success, as evidenced by the fact no one has bid on the trophies yet.  Currently you can place a bid for $3 and very likely win the lot.  A lifetime of commitment and adulation isn't worth three bucks.  

Sportsmen are not the only ones who do this.  I had a friend who, from the 1960's to the 1980's, raced motorcycles.  He was good.  His shop was full of trophies and framed copies of bike magazines with his picture on the cover. The investment again was massive.  Bowlers, bicyclist, marshal artist, musicians are other folks I have known who do the same thing. Not all trophies represent our hobbies and recreations.  Some trophies to success are made of brick and mortar, some have wheels and nice leather.  People talk about a trophy wife, husband or kids which can also be a testimony to success in a given endeavor.  Even working for a good reputation among our peers is a trophy of sorts.  We all have trophies we want or at least consider desirable.  

As I thought about this auction and this box of trophies a couple of thoughts came to mind.  First we always put the trophies in a box and get rid of them, even if that box is called a coffin. My second thought was "What trophies am I trying to collect?"  I also thought of paraphrasing a passage from Jesus' sermon on the Mount:  

“Do not collect for yourselves trophies to hang on the wall, but will some day be put in a box and sold at auction cut rate to a stranger. But collect for yourselves trophies in heaven, where you can enjoy them forever and ever."