If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
Yep, that's me. I'm one lucky human being.
When I think about this, I'm usually reminded of something Nezua wrote years ago. He was trying to find the nexus between all of the "isms" that plague us. That particular day, he found it in a sense of entitlement.
Big change sometimes take place in the form of something as small as one thought being abandoned, and a new one taking its place...
What happens when you nurture a sense of humility in place of entitlement? You place your feet on the same ground as I... Entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude. And honestly, you are one lucky human.
Having a sense of perspective about our place in the world can bring on that humility and gratitude - and go miles in stripping us of our sense of entitlement.
Thank you for posting that.
ReplyDeleteI had a sense today that I'd done enough screaming at the dark and needed to take at least a few minutes to spread some light.
ReplyDeleteA sobering reminder of how much I really have. In the flurry of living and reaching out for 'more' I sometimes tend to forget. And this 'sene of perspective about our place in the world' is probably what that certain someone we 'know' is trying to engender in the country as a whole.
ReplyDeleteHave a good night, and God willing, I'll see you tomorrow.
Someone asked me recently how I would change my life if suddenly handed a million dollars. I had to think long and hard, and all I could come up with is that I would buy a house, a tiny one, so I could get a dog. A dog is really the only thing I want that I don't already have and I still miss my two dogs who died five and six years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I have all that much (I don't even nave much real furniture), it's that I've got all I need.
Now, if only my underwear would stop fraying and falling apart, I would never have to shop again. Except for food.
Robbie, I hope you manage to get a dog one day. We had three, one inherited when our daughter went to live in the States, my dad's dog when he died, and our lovely Martha. They were all roughly the same age, and we got them all to sixteen then lost all three within a year and a half. I still miss my border collie who died in '82.
ReplyDeleteIt hurts so much to lose them, and as we're getting on now, we decided not to get another, but our home isn't the same without them.
As for possessions, as my mother was fond of saying, furniture doesn't greet you when you come home.