During a middle-of-town conversation with a few similarly middle-aged old friends the other day, one of them, like many of her age-mates around the table, wondered out loud, Why do we always have unique problems with every income level you get to? The way she phrased it kind of struck a chord.

“Unique problems at every income level”—wow!

Anyway, she went on to wonder why some Ugandan teenagers at 15 years, mostly born into wealthy families, were being treated for depression that early. The conversation went on. I only resisted pointing to the danger of technology among teens because I didn’t want to interrupt and wanted to hear more about “unique income level problems”—or so I thought.

The entire thing got me pondering how no one is untouched by sin. And by sin, I mean not just doing bad things, but the natural inclination to resist God with everything. in us.

Yet for some reason, we for a while convince ourselves that a little more privilege will immunize us from both our broken hearts and a broken world.

And so, as the income-level exposure begins. The privileged teenager in Kampala’s most elite school, exposed to a tablet every holiday, catches a stray TikTok video that launches his lifetime addiction to pornography. His aunties wonder what befell his once innocent personality.

The one who “slept their way to the top” now grows so bored with the privilege and circles she finds herself in, despite her hefty bank balance and influence in the organization.

Or maybe it’s the sudden loneliness many who lied their way to go abroad stumble into, having underestimated their community privilege back home. A “green pasture” opportunity in a dream global city with no one to talk to.

It appeared to me in that conversation that vanity is wired into everything under the sun, i.e., everything we chase without God, and until we find our true spiritual north, everything on its way will arrive with unique vanities.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was surrounded by “vineyards and great projects” (Ecclesiastes 2:4), commercial ships of Tarshish and his 700 wives, and he had to wade through the emptiness of it all until he summarised,

“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

In hindsight, we can blame him for not walking the talk, probably because we haven’t considered the only man who perfectly did, Jesus, who now invites us to look to him and escape the trap of thinking we have reached the top, only to realise we are on the wrong building.