On how the cookie crumbles
Have you ever found yourself sitting on your bed, on your floor, at your desk, whatever... and just looked around your room and took in all the stuff you have? From my vantage point right now, sitting on my BED, typing on my LAPTOP... I can see my TV, my DVDS, my collection of SHOES so proudly displayed on the backside of my door, articles of CLOTHING peeking out of my unclosed closet door. This is just the big things, this doesn't include the light thats on next to me, or the clock, the clean water, the telephone, the endless amounts of picture frames, my stack of books on the floor, the pile of clothes at the foot of my bed that I can't fit into my closet nor my dresser. why? why do I have so much stuff? why am I so lucky? Yes, I have a job and I have to work for what I have-- but there are people that work just as hard as me, if not harder and they don't have a fraction of all these unnecessary things. Sometimes I ask myself-- why did God want me to be born in the 20th century, in America, to middle class caucasian parents? I asked myself this a lot over the past year, especially after my whole skin cancer episode (maybe not so much the caucasian parents part, but still). Why was I born in a time when medicine had a cure for what I had? Why was I born in a country that had these technologies and procedures available? If I was born in any other century I most likely would have died from melanoma. That would have been my fate. If I was living in a third world country TODAY, I would probably eventually die from melanoma. I wouldn't have the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries available to me, and if I did I probably wouldn't be able to afford it. Why did I luck out so much? and why do I have all this stuff? How come when people are suffering so much in other parts of the world, or in other parts of this country-- I can talk about it on my computer, as if rubbing it in even more? A part of me just wants to get rid of everything and give it to everybody else... and a part of me feels like I am too small to take on everything I want to change. How do I stop my feeling of want and be satisfied with what I have? How do I distinguish between want and need? unsatisfied and satisfied? We will never be satisfied, so stop wanting. You will always want more. Live simply, so people can simply live.