A Puppet’s Tears

The Hollow Vessels of False Success

Who embodies the perfect characteristics of the ideal puppet? This question lingers when I reflect on a conversation with a young soul seeking guidance on attaining career success. I offered this wisdom: first I said, define success for yourself, for this word carries countless meanings across the spectrum of human experience. Never measure your worth by another’s definition of achievement, for you cannot truly know if someone has found success unless you understand the depths of their being; if their spirit finds peace, if their emotional needs find fulfillment, if they nurture genuine connections.

Consider what lies beneath their perceived economic prosperity. Do they radiate health and positive disposition? How do they treat their fellow travelers in this life? Does selfishness guide their actions? Is money their only deity? What beliefs anchor their soul? What purpose drives their existence? These questions reveal the foundation beneath the facade.

Do they possess self-knowledge? Can they view the world with objective clarity? Can they extend the same love to others that they harbor for themselves? Do they lift those who struggle beneath the weight of circumstance? Or are they privileged narcissists, blind to the realities of those from different cultures and walks of life? What vocation calls to them, and what sacrifices will they make to answer? Can they find peaceful slumber in the quiet hours of night?

The Dance of Deception

Are they vessels of honesty, or will they embrace deceit to advance their ambitions? Success intertwines with illusion, perception, and deception, words bound together by invisible threads. We inhabit an impatient world where immediate gratification reigns supreme, especially among the younger generation who seek instant rewards without patient cultivation.

Modern relationships resemble transactions at a marketplace. We acquire what appears appealing without examining what dwells within. Those who stand for nothing will inevitably fall for anything, therefore embodying the perfect puppet: soulless, empty, conforming to preserve comfort, harboring no authentic opinions, avoiding advocacy for the marginalized. They follow rather than lead, loyal only to circumstances that promise personal gain.

I once out of pure curiosity engaged a prominent CEO about their management preferences. Their response was chilling in its simplicity: he said, “I love Puppets. The less resistant, the better. I issue commands, and they obey. Period.” Some leaders welcome diverse perspectives: others demand unquestioned compliance. Certain minorities have learned to excel in this subservient role, displaying identical characteristic of a puppet; dangling from invisible strings, their inevitable tears already forming before they fall.

The Divine Ledger of Justice

This behavior has always existed but now manifests openly at the highest levels of power. Those at society’s economic bottom eventually recognize the game for what it is. We witness a renaissance of truth as the veil lifts; what once occurred in shadows now happens in plain sight. The younger generation grasps earlier how the system operates, discovering how celebrities, politicians, and executives secured their positions through improprieties, inequities, and perversions.

Such paths disqualify any claim to true success. The means of acquiring wealth determines whether one has achieved authentic prosperity. I reserve judgment, looking deeper than surface appearances, leaving final verdicts to the Almighty. Yet we must cease elevating those we barely know to pedestals they have no business occupying. Truth invariably emerges, as scripture reminds us: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, nothing concealed that will not be known or brought into the open.” (Luke 8:17)

Those harboring selfish spirits align their definition of success with darkness itself, removing all moral boundaries in pursuit of their objectives. This contradicts divine success as defined in sacred texts. Earthly achievement may come, but at what spiritual cost? Selling your soul to serve another’s evil desires, sacrificing integrity for money and the illusion of power; constitutes the ultimate self-betrayal.

The Karmic Reckoning

This betrayal diverts you from spiritual contentment and your destined path. A cloud of negative karma follows wherever you go, marking you with spiritual corruption. As scripture teaches, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)

The puppet existence brings insomnia and spiritual death. When you lose sight of your authentic self, your relationships rest on false pretenses; a cloud that attracts fellow puppets, birds of identical plumage flocking together. Some puppets lie awake, haunted by the spirits of abolitionists and activists who sacrificed everything for truth and equality. A parade of puppets of color have participated in reversing civil rights progress, perpetuating poverty, and undermining environmental justice downright shameful and ungodly.

The Culmination of Betrayal

The Minister of Balance ensures that God’s harsh justice manifests against purveyors of wickedness, racism, and selfishness. The universe maintains its ledgers with perfect precision. Those who sow betrayal shall harvest tears in abundance, weeping for the harm they’ve inflicted in pursuit of selfish gain. Their success exists only as illusion; a smoke-filled mirror reflecting distorted reality.

In the end, their master’s never truly respected them, only used them as tools to be discarded when their utility expires. Like yesterday’s garbage, they find themselves abandoned, returning broken to those they harmed most grievously, begging forgiveness with tears streaming down their wooden cheeks.

The loss of individualism and spirituality becomes the inevitable culmination of disingenuous graft pursued for self-benefit alone. The puppet’s tears fall not from painted eyes but from the wounded soul that remembers, however dimly, what it once meant to be truly alive and free. ~ Balance Due