The Skid Row Of Success

I have heard of the "Skid row of success."  It is when things look good on the outside but on the inside you are coming undone.  Outsides are often about things, your stuff, your toys, or appearances.  Job, home, income, vacations, lifestyle, clothe, family all look good.  It is the way we often judge ourselves and others.  It is where we put a lot of our energy so we can have all this outside stuff.  So why is it skid row?  Because on the inside we are killing ourselves and if we don't attend to our spiritual center, we in fact may literally kill ourselves, should we have the courage.  Fear and cowardice are good things here. We are destroying ourselves, just like people do who live literally on a skid row situation.  We destroy ourselves by trying to fill the insides with the outsides.  Such unfulfilling activity is often muted momentarily by drugs, alcohol, sugar, exercise and sex but to no avail.  All temporary and then such solutions become the problem.  Thus the metaphoric skid row becomes the reality of life.  The outsides are gone and the insides are empty.  What remains? Desperation.  If you get that gift, you don't have to stay empty.  And if you follow it you will live with gratitude forever.  I never forget where I came from.