I am pleased to see that I have 10 subscriptions to my Posterous blog. My hat is off to each of you and I hope that I can continue to say something that is worthy of reading.
We are coming up on Thanksgiving Holidays 2009 and while I am looking forward to having some time off from work and spending a quiet holiday with my family I am painfully aware of the fact that there will be folks all around me that will not be having a good time. I am painfully aware of this fact because I use to be one of those people. In 2001 we lost our Jessica Ann who was ten years old to cancer. It has been 8 years since her passing or "going home" but the holiday seasons since then have not been the same. Jessica could light up a room with her smile and it was so easy for me to get her to laugh and giggle. I can still hear her voice saying "oh daddy" when I would do that. It gave me great joy to be able to do that with her. Yes, I have a lot of bad memories of the last 14 months of her life running through my head but I also have many happy moments of her life to cherish as well.
When I gave the title to this blog as "Thanks Giving" it was not a typo. During the Thanksgiving holiday we should give thanks. For many of us that is very easy. We all have our lists of things we have in our possession and our families, our relationships and our jobs. There are many things to be thankful for and like most of us I am very aware of them. I am thankful for good mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health. I guess some would argue with me on the mental health comment however I don't think I am any crazier than the next person. I also am thankful for the struggles and pain in my life. Remember that I said that some would argue with me about the mental health. I am thankful for the struggles and pain because it reminds me that I am alive and gives me the opportunity to grow in grace, maturity and knowledge. I am like the next person in that I too get weary of struggling with finances, raising teenagers, taxes, politics , religion etc. We all struggle with a little bit of the above and then some. Life is not a bowl of cherries and every day can be a challenge or struggle depending on how you look at it.
As we enter in to the Thanksgiving and Christmas season in 2009 it will not find our family involved in the mad rush for materialism. Thanks to the economy and my wife not having a job for the last several years we have been slowly but surely coming to the realization that less is more. Not only is less more but life is so much more simple when you think about it. Do we really have to have all the stuff? Do we really have to have all of the electronic services and subscriptions? I believe that in our society and especially in America that we are being led to believe that we must have the fanciest clothes, the nicest home and car and we must keep up with the Jones's in order to be happy.
Like most people I have allowed myself to get sucked into the madness. The only problem with getting sucked into the "I gotta have it and do it" mentality is that I have allowed extra stress into my life because I just can not afford it. I have allowed my wants and needs to get all fuzzy. I need a roof over my head and I need to eat. I need water, sewer and electricity and trash pickup and clothes. I need the basics of life and that does not include all of the frills. It all goes back to less is more. Less stuff, less services, less bills and less stress. We (my family) needs to learn how to let go of it. We need to let go of it until we can afford it again. It is ok not to have everything or to be able to do all the things that we see others doing all around us. We must live our lives more efficiently and in a less costly manner and learn how to be more frugal in this economy.
The other day I spoke to a gentleman about our current political situation in America. I did not know this person and I did not agree with everything he had to say but I gave him the ability to speak his mind. We all have opinions and perspective that is unique to who we are and where we have come from. One of the things that he said I agree with. He said that Americans feel as if we are entitled. We believe certain things in our American way of life to be rights when in fact they are a privilege. He used the ability to drive on the roadways as a right. Driving on our roadways is not only a privilege but it is also a privilege that we pay for every year through taxes. He also reminded me that while we are all consumed with being entitled and believing that certain things are a right that we are only focusing on our lives and the things that are right in front of us. We have the "it wont happen to me" mentality. The only time that we care about something enough to do something about it is when it directly affects our little worlds. Yes, I am thankful to be an American. I am thankful because I was born in Germany and my sister and I were both dumped in an orphanage. Had it not been for my adoptive parents bringing us to America my life would not have been as blessed as it has been. I do not take kindly to burning the flag or bashing our soldiers or the freedom for which they fight for. One thing that I am not thankful for is the fact that our elected officials in Washington have lost sight of the fact that they are in office to serve the common good of the people who elected them. I am not a political analyst and there are way more things that I do not understand about politics and probably never will.
One thing I do understand however is that we elect men and women to public office because we believe that they are men and women of integrity and that they are the best qualified individuals to be our representatives in whatever level of government they are in. We are looking to them to be our voice, our ambassadors in government and to make sure certain things do happen and certain things do not happen. At some point in our history we have allowed big business and special interest groups to pollute the fabric of our government to the point that our politicians have lost site of what our fore fathers started when our nation was founded. I am not thankful that our governor in the great state of SC is on the news almost every evening because of his total lack of integrity both in his professional life as well as his personal life. Every day we hear stories of our leaders in government who have been caught with their hands in the wrong places or doing and saying the wrong things.
When will enough be enough for us? How long will we allow the madness in Washington to continue? I like what the gentleman said the other day when he said that it is going to take everyone in America to stop thinking that we are entitled. We need to quit being so self centered and consumed by our own security bubbles and learn how to look around us. United we will continue to stand but I don't think that what is going on can be construed as our being united. What is the saying about when good people stand by that evil will prosper? I think that there is a lot of truth in that.
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