All my life, I've been raised a certain way, and after yesterday I've become more and more thankful that I have my parents' beliefs and values. When I was younger, my family had a bit of money.. we had a speedboat, we had a cottage up north, we threw parties all the time, had three jet-skiis.. we were "living the good life". However, something happened that we were not expecting.. Life. Life happens, and sometimes we underestimate what is possible to happen.
My father's company moved out to montana, and he did not want to leave Michigan.. so he tried to find a new job. My mother used to work at the Ambassador Bridge, but got laid off. Our lives changed drastically after that.. but if you want the truth, I'm kind of glad that our lives changed this way. Simply because you don't have money, does not mean that you have a bad life. I value what I have even more now. I value what is truly important: family, friends, good will.. I try to help people more, because I know what it's like to have to choose between whether we have heat or water. Things are not necessarily getting any better, but now that I am older, I am doing more to pitch-in and work for what we recieve.
Now that we've lost many of the material possessions that we became so accustomed to, I realize that I am better off without those things. I have more fun sitting around the house with my friends than I ever could on a big boat or jet-skiing. Because I know how much the people in my life mean to me, I go out of my way more often to help someone else, and I will go out of my way to try and hang out with the people I truly care about.
My main point here is not to try and complain about what I do not have, but to encourage you to look past the material possessions and to see a person for who they really are. Don't worry so much about what new video game is coming out or what is new in Victoria's Secret, but instead, worry about who you will be with or what you can do to benifit someone's life. Worry about living your life so you will look back when you're old and gray and realize that you were a good person and you made your life worth living. No one is better or worse than you, unless you make it so. If you treat others with anger or injustice, that person is better than you. If you fall towards the ignorance that strongly taints the lives of many people in this world, you will soon realize that you have wasted your life harboring hate.
Money has nothing to do with winning or being a better person. Having a huge, fancy house does not make you any better than someone who lives in a mud hut. It is the value of your character and the size of your heart that truly matter, and I think we should all take that into account, myself included. We should all learn to value others more than any material possession. Having money isn't a bad thing, I'm simply saying that I think we, as a society are too focused on it. I don't care how much money someone has, only what kind of a person they are, and I wish the rest of the world would think the same.
"The only real justice in life is death. Don't let anyone else make you feel inferior, because in the end, we're all just as dead. Then does it matter how much money you have or what size of a house you live in?"
-- Grandpa Randles
See I love this post, I couldn't agree more. I know people who don't appreciate what they have, maybe because they've had it all along. My story is the opposite of yours, I started off with no money, two siblings living in Wayne on a street that had a crack house on it. But through hard work, my dad got the promotion he deserved. I remember he used to work such long hours, I barely saw him. Now, we have money, but I don't see it. I see it in the form of my education being paid for, but not with fancy cars and clothes. The problem with alot of the youth of today they don't know what it's like to work for their dollar, and reality's gonna hit them like a train. Good work
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. We don't have much but I like it that way. I'm lucky enough that my parents cared enough to send me through school. among other things. It's funny because the other day I thought of that whole "if your house caught on fire what would you save?" and beside family and dog of course, I picked my art. It's really the only thing that has any true value to me. I'm like you are too with the helping out to have money. I always sound it more satisfying in helping someone out or doing nice when I have more. I spent some of my birthday money one my sister because I didn't really know what to do with it. But yeah those people who base wealth on the amount of dollars you have and not the amount of character have truly missed an important lesson
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