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I stopped at a chain restaurant. It was a sit
down-type place that offered good food along with an irritating loudness
from too many TVs.
I ordered a salad that was both green and
crunchy. It came in a bushel basket. It was enough to feed me for three
days.
I was on my way to visit some people who live
in a house not much smaller than the barn in which I spent much of my
formative years. It’s a beautiful new house with a three-car garage and
enough bathrooms to guarantee there will be no waiting. The speed limit
in the driveway had just been raised to 55 miles per hour.
As I drove towards the home, while listening
to a radio discussion of companies that are too big to fail, I was
passed by several SUVs the size of Rhode Island. The goal of our
automakers is to seat everyone comfortably. Entering the city, I noticed
garage sale signs posted here, there and everywhere. Trees and utility
poles had become want ad sections.
While it’s true that I didn’t spend as much
time in a car when I was a boy as I do now and that I grew up on a farm,
I do not remember there being so many garage sales, yard sales or
rummage sales.
As I neared my destination, I saw several
large self-storage units. I don’t recall any such thing while I was
growing up.
We have a lot more stuff today than we had
back in the day. When we get what we want, we want more.
An argument could be made that we have too
much stuff. The stuff we had when I was a lad became old stuff and was
passed on to others. Family members could expect a lot of hand-me-downs
before they would get new stuff. As the baby of the family, I wore my
sister’s high heels to prom. I was lucky I didn’t sprain my ankle doing
the twist. My analyst says I will get over it one day.
Today, not having enough stuff defines
failure for many. Because we have so much stuff, we need big places to
keep it all in—houses, garages and storage units.
I don’t have a lot of stuff. I realize that
much of the world would dispute that, but if you would eliminate my
ever-burgeoning collection of books, I am not a great accumulator of
things. There is an Icelandic proverb that I adhere to, “Blind is a
bookless man.” Other than books, I collect only bills. Bills are an easy
thing to collect. If I don’t pay one, the creditor sends me another for
my collection.
Advances in communications have made it a
small world (unless you have to paint it), yet the world has been
super-sized. Bigger may not be better, but it certainly is bigger. I am
able to go to one of those warehouse places and buy a lifetime supply of
toilet paper. I’d have to build an implement shed to house it. That’s
what life has become.
The news of the rich and famous proves that
getting what we want doesn’t guarantee happiness. A little dog raises a
leg on big wheels.
I was digging through my desk drawer when I
found a small scrap of paper that my late mother had carried in her
purse for many years. It was not currency, not a treasure map, not a
stock certificate, but something much better than any of those. It was a
tattered copy of “Footprints.” This is familiar prose to many. I suspect
that my mother looked to this for help during troubled times. I did the
same.
It showed up on a day when I needed a bit of
comforting.
It was a small thing, but to me it was a big
thing.
We need small things in a big world.
©Al Batt 2008 |
