I have the basics, I am happy. I have more than the basics. I am happy. Am I slightly annoyed I don’t have more than the more than basics? Sometimes. I wish my sewing machine worked. Right now I hand sew the toys and the clothes that need mending but I am happy enough to do this instead of replacing them. Do I wish I had a needle for my record player? Absolutely. Do I NEED these things? No. Once you have been deprived of the simple things, like fresh water or even the slightly more complex things, like enough counter space, you come home and appreciate what you have instead of wishing for more.
My mom’s house is a third world country. There isn’t the freshest of water. When you bath you have no shower and an inch of yellow-ish to brown-ish water to bathe in. (The town put in a water treatment facility but it doesn’t work very efficiently). Her walls are caving in and the gaps in the drywall actually lets in breezes if the wind is right. There are flies everywhere. The bathroom toilet doesn’t flush properly and the bathroom taps don’t turn off correctly. In the kitchen there is no counter space. Three quarters of it is taken up with cupboard. The doors on the cupboard don’t close nicely and so if you don’t lift and shove, they will come open and knock whatever is on the counter on to the floor. Sometimes this is incredibly messy. The house is tilted, so if whatever is knocked off the counter is round it will roll. If you don’t catch it, it will roll towards the open door to the dirt basement. The dirt basement is an unfinished basement with a dirt floor. And when I mean unfinished I mean it is dug like a grave under the house and breeds mice and snakes. I don’t mean unfinished in the sense that you need to put up drywall and lay down carpet. It is very spooky and very unclean. The carpet upstairs smells of rot and mold and is uneven enough to trip on constantly. You feel constantly physically attacked by it. My mom smokes so the house also smells of cigarettes. I kept trying to tell her to quit, not knowing what she was dealing with. After 3 days there I nearly started smoking to deal with the stress of the house. There are no good windows. There is one tiny one in the living room that lets in little to no light. There is a good one in the kitchen, but it is a small room and in the afternoon the light it lets in makes that room unbearably warm and uncomfortably humid. So the living room is where you escape to keep cool. But it is so dark and smells so strange that all of a sudden you don’t care about your health at all. You feel depressed suddenly. All I ate while I was there was comfort food. Potatoes, pasta and cheese. I drank gallons of milk and coffee and no water. I drank tons of tea. I felt miserable and lazy and like a flower wilting with out sunlight or a breeze of fresh air.
I came home from helping my mom pack up this crap-hole so she can eventually move. I came home to my clean smelling, breezy, bright, clean house. Filled with bright, comforting things, beautiful smells and tons of counter space. I don’t want for anything. I had 2 long soaks in my bright clean tub full of clear fresh water. I have too much and every day I will count my blessings instead of claiming I need this thing or that thing to make my life easier…happier…
Breathe, smile and be grateful is my lesson here. Do it. Always. Remind yourself of what you do have instead of moaning that if you had that hundred dollar something you would feel more organized, pretty, happier… Breathe. Enjoy. Breathe.
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