HI Venson, Are you saying that instant gratification and living in a pipe dream got us into this mess.The days of easy credit are gone, Maybe we should have listened to your aunt Tilly..........
MOLE
Hiya MOLE,
Maybe yes, mabe no. We all seem ot be looking for Jesus (metaphorically speaking) in one form or another to, if not save, at least distract us from a nightmare we have yet to wake up from. So far salvation is all about easy fixes, namely having things -- the ultimate car, the super-duper vacuum cleaner, the perfect home. Not bad but moreso sad if they're all you got.
We're bombarded daily with "musts" that most of us will never gain or achieve by every advertisement that turns up. Thus all we seem to have learned is to want but not how to be satisfied.
What I loved about my Aunt Lucy, is that, even though she believed it was a good thing to buy a good shoe or coat, brand names never meant as much to her as her sense of personal honor. The lady ran a pretty tidy ship in the small row house she and her husband owned in Philadelpia.. It was important that the bricks be tuckpointed that the trim never looked in need of touching up and the marble steps be kept clean but most important to her was that the family within that house was kept on a solid footing. There was no product on store shelves to handle that. It took a sense of what was right to accomplish the job.
She never preached to get a point across but most often would get you to see things her way by relating some similar experience she'd been through or seen the result of. She was not about putting on airs or putting herself above others but she staunchly believed in doing the best she could -- in all things. It was enough for her to merely feel she was living in a way life should be lived.
She never allowed me to delude myself that anything worth having could be gained without sacrifice or sweat. When my expalnation to my actions was, "I don't know," her reply was, "Yes, you do know. You did what you wanted." When I opted to back off in the face of challenge and excuse my lack of action as being due to the issue being to much, good old Aunt Lucy never failed to tell me, "You can do anything you want to do. You just have to want to."
Admittedly, I'm crazy about all sorts of stuff -- cars, clothes and gadgets. Yet whenever I get hype-overload, this remarkable lady who made cake from scratch completely by hand with a wooden spoon though she had a perfectly good electric mixer in the cupboard, who actually preferred a broom to her vacuum cleaner always comes to mind. Whether by way of technology or plain old elbow grease, she taught me that there are many ways to accomplish the same thing and I am thankful for that. My only sadness is that I still have a long way to go to match her exzample. Anyway . . .
Happy holidays to you and everyone here and, even though this is certainly not the best of times we've lived in, although it may be difficult to gain ground may we at least hold our own without having to back up.
Yours truly,
Venson
