The Good Days

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Yesterday you met my new friend, Clara. I have been thinking a lot about Clara -- about what seems to make her tick, what makes her happy. She talks about events in her childhood, her formative years, during the Depression, with great fondness. She talks about how simple things made her happy -- a warm drink on a cold day, the warm stove when they would all sit next to it together, a loved one reading aloud. She laughs out loud at the memories because they are good. It defies logic doesn't it? The Depression was good. She says "those were the good days."

Our society has seemingly lost the ability to take pleasure in little things. We have lost the ability to make good. We always need more, more, more to make us happy. Sadly my own children are that way in many things. They aren't exactly greedy, but they like things.

I have, for many years, tried to teach my children that acquiring more things does not make us happy. We choose to be happy.

I have a favorite movie that I have watched over and over (and over). The funny thing is, it's not a favorite movie for the actors (in fact, for their political views I really have a hard time tolerating them) or the happy ending (the ending is not happy and I am in complete moral disagreement with the outcome), but because of the central theme of the story. The movie is One True Thing, and if you have ever seen it, you know what I mean about the above-mentioned issues. If you've never seen it, I won't give it away. My point is, the character played by Meryl Streep, the mother, who is dying of cancer, tells her daughter, in one very poignant scene, "It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful."

That is an incredible philosophy of life and, though there is no mention of God in the movie, it is what God wants for us. He wants us to be happy with Him and with what He chooses for us. And it is so true. What Clara learned in the Depression, and what I hope my children learn in their lives, is that the things that we have are plenty, there is no need to search for more. We just have to learn to love those things that we do have, instead of feeling that we're missing something better.

Each evening, as Doug and I watch the news, and listen to the political analysts predict what's going to happen with this economy, I think to myself, "If we, as a society, could just learn to be happy with what we have, none of this would matter." I truly hope that the silver lining of all the money lost in recent days, with old folks losing their retirement savings, and young folks losing jobs and college funds, is that we learn to love the things we have instead of always searching for the next thing to make us happy.



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