Age Counseling Youth
Once Upon a Christmas… my Mother-in-Law gifted my children with some thickly quilted fuzzy slippers to put on in the morning when the wood stove in our little cabin had gone out and the water in the dog dish was more often than not frozen solid. Unfortunately both of the pairs of slippers she’d bought consisted of two right feet. So off she went right after Christmas to the store where she’d bought them, and let the kids pick out new pairs that they could wear on both their feet.
The saleslady remembered when Mom had bought them, and the story she told about the kids living in the cold mountains without automatic heat. She asked the kids how they could stand living in a house with no heat. The kids looked at her quizzically, my daughter answered that of course we had heat, we just didn’t have electricity. That really threw the young woman for a loop, so she just had to ask…
If you’ve no electricity, how can you have heat? Daughter smiled. “Fire,” she answered calmly. “Fire is hot.”
We lived in that little cabin for less than two years, but it was certainly an adventure in learning the difference between desire and necessity. Much older now, I do admit to liking electricity and indoor plumbing even though I know I can live without. Through the years I have encountered people out in the broader world who, when hearing that we don’t have television, are quite simply at a loss to understand what in the world we find to DO with ourselves. As if parking your butt on a couch to volunteer for hypnosis designed to make you buy things you don’t need for more money than you’ve got qualifies as some sort of art, education or sport. Very strange.
I guess I’ve always had a fairly quirky personality. What other people do with their time and money has never much affected what I do with my time and money. Keeping up with the Joneses always seemed like a total waste of life to me, but then again, I don’t know anyone named Jones. I’d much rather keep up with me, my own friends and my own family.
It was probably inevitable that I missed the point in history when being sensibly frugal and confidently self sufficient became hopelessly un-hip, and conspicuous consumption – fueled by ever increasing debt and complete cluelessness about how to live any other way – became the standard way of life. Judging from the number of shoppers at the mall any given Saturday, it seems like nobody believes the old adage “The Best Things in Life Are Free” anymore.
I’d begun to wonder if there are any people under the age of 50 in this country who really grasp the connection between their wasteful, materialistic lifestyles and things like global warming, air, water and soil pollution, disappearing natural resources and the crushing poverty that afflicts the vast majority of human beings on this planet. I’ve wondered how so many people got fooled into believing that “stuff” and “happiness” are synonymous.
So it was with great relief and a renewed sense of hope that I found some very good articles by young(er than me) bloggers out there in interland who not only understand the connections, but write about living frugally as if it were something to be proud of! As we collectively move into the deep recession that cannot be averted by going deeper into debt, I hope to see more young people coming out the other side of it with a better understanding of life and meaning, as well as a new respect for the very real connections between how we choose to live and the wellbeing of the entire planet. Being ‘Green’ is more than driving a Prius, buying $20 bags of forest-grown coffee beans for the expresso machine, and doing lunch at the organic bistro instead of the steak house buffet.
Check out some of these cool blog articles and let yourself begin to hope! Why, it might one day turn out that Americans remember what they forgot to learn… the best things in life really might be free!
Links:
Does My Frugal Life Make Me Miserable?