« Are you unemployed or just not interested? | Home | What Matters Now »
It’s the small stuff
By Charles Martin | December 14, 2009
As we approach the end of this long chapter called 2009, let’s remember it’s the small stuff that makes it worthwhile.
Diamonds are small for a reason. Grains of sand make a mountain.
Our kid’s dumbest act or sound or saying is the thing we laugh the longest about.
We forget this as urban-freaked humans in our new Audi Autos in our Giganto Homes with every bell and whistle. We forget that just having what we have is enough. Sure, send this to me when I get off track. I’ve accepted the fate. And boy it feels so aswesome.
Everything that probably didn’t go your way this year was due to the big stuff. Yes, you know it. Don’t deny it.
I hear people tell me “I can’t be unemployed (take a chance), Charles”. I hear people tell me “I MUST drive a big, nice, car and have a magazine-ready home, Charles”. I hear people describe their rocky marriages and relationships and I hear “…it’s about the money, Charles”… “I don’t have the lifestyle she wants me to have, Charles”, or “I have to put 99% of my paycheck in the bank or he/she’ll kill me, Charles”…
Balance is balance and I’m here to guess a lot of us don’t have it. Underspending is a disease too. Check your facts Jacks. Under. Over. It’s all the same.
BS on all that crap about the big stuff.
What if.
What if you went all out in 2010 and made it about everything BUT the big stuff.
What if you decided that you couldn’t add any cumulative “fun” purchases over $2,500 (physical product — not education, healthcare, or the sort) to your life in 2010. Cars, boats, cigars, poker, drugs, jewelry, men, women, alcohol, big vacations… the like.
What if that meant you tried to trick yourself into just finding out if it was possible. Even if you have a million, billion dollars in your accounts right now, can you pare back? Can you test the waters and see if you are still the same person after you’re stripped naked? I doubt some of you can muster it. It’d be fun to find out though.
There’s a lady next door that does night nurse nanny work. Her current client is an average mom with so-so means that has twin newborns. One may never leave the hospital. One lives with machinery tied to him. You say and I say “boy, I’m thankful for my perfect kids…” But are you? I say you have probably taken them for granted before. I know I have mine. Gosh, how sad, but how human.
Praying and thanking through prayer is fine if you do that sort of thing. But what do you do in your physical life to show the world that your 3×3 space on the planet is being used worthwhile? Humans surprise me sometimes with their tally of their gifts to the planet. It eclipses rock star levels. Hit me when I get that high. I try to stop when it gets heady, but in case I don’t hit me.
We SAY we are thankful and we probably feel like we are. We SAY we are ready to strip it bare. But in reality it all goes by so fast that we forget and motor on comparing labels again. Our most cherished moments in life are the ones when we are young and when money wasn’t on our radar because we didn’t deal with it. Like my kids are now. Free and easy. Everything pops up on the table and we dig in. Just like the cartoons they watch on TV.
We simply forget that the only SURE thing is death and it’s a-coming. And before that we need to stop and throw our love and energy around and make a difference in a stranger’s life. A stranger can be your mother in law that you think you hate. It can be the lady with the twins. It can be that person standing at the freeway exit. I’ve been on the receiving end of charity and I don’t take that for granted — or I try not to. And in every case it changed my life.
Do it silently. Do it loudly. However you do it, just do it!. So many of us aren’t prepared and so many of us aren’t that bolted down in reality. Me included. But I try. I try real hard.
The Treehouse gang will announce something in Q1, 2010 that will take place when school is out next year. It will strip all our defenses bare. All of our worries and inconsistensies will be tested as we embark on something powerful, but scary and mega-fun at the same time. The unknown is to be known. The reality of the world will come into more focus. Our stereotypes are to be exposed and changed. Our understanding of the world we live in sharpened. Can’t wait to spill the beans!.
We humans have to change in big ways or we don’t change. I hope you are able to bolt 2010 down and get what you want out of the rest of your life. There are some of you that will embark on new marriages, hopefully a few new babies will be born, and new college and new jobs will begin. I will be there cheering you on because I love and care about you.
It’s the least I can do.
Make the most of it.
We will. You will. I will.
Stay tuned and finish out your 2009 with a bang!
Topics: Kid Stuff, Mind and Planet | No Comments »