Lately I’ve been questioning my ability to be myself and be recognized for my achievements, my successes, and to keep up with being me. In fear of this sounding too much like a diary entry and wanting you to keep reading I want to turn these thoughts on you.
How do you find time to be yourself, to find yourself in a lot of cases, when the corrupt world around us demands payment of money and essentially our souls? Day in and night out money is on most of our minds; if we’re striving to be rich, just pay bills, or to stay rich the world is now run on money and the ability to pay for things.
But what are things without the time to love ourselves? That hot rod in the garage that can hold many cars, attached to the house with many empty rooms. The piece of art that hangs in a family room that never sees a family. Love is actually what makes the world go around, not money, but most days this can be very hard to believe.
For those of you living pay cheque to pay cheque, giving your time up to work for a boss instead of for yourself or to relax with your family life holds so much more. The pictures on your desk may have captured beautiful moments of time but they are already outdated.
Let’s create the world we left forgotten by relaxing, focusing on the love we have for ourselves and our family and when you figure out how to pay the bills with happiness, joy and love please let the world know. 🙂
Happy days and thanks for reading and believing,
Sarah Butland
Sarah:
You have a wonderful way with words. I personally think that the only way to true happiness is to be happy with what one has. I do however, agree with you that so many do not have enough money to live day by day and that is sad. That is where the world comes in and helps out – either by fighting for their rights to have a decent income (for those unemployed, we need social assistance that is at least at the poverty level that we have – the need affordable housing, etc. etc. – we should be fighting for those things).
Having said that, I believe that too many of us expect too much and that prevents us from being happy within ourselves. When we are happy with ourselves, we will no longer be looking at ‘things’ to make us happy. We will not buy things on our credit cards without the sure means of paying our bill at the end of the month. We will set up a budget that we can live on. We will live in affordable houses (even if they do not quite come up to whatever ‘standard’ our friends have). When my son was born, my husband and I had to make a decision – to raise our child ourselves or to work for “things’. We chose to have one of us stay home, knowing exactly what we would be giving up (material things). We have never regretted our decision (my husband was Mr. Mom until our son was in school and then my husband worked part-time). Happiness followed – not the happiness as the world might think, but our own happiness as a family. Once – a long time ago – when my husband and I were first married and living in a mobile home while we were saving our money in order to buy a house – friends of ours asked us why we were going to the laundramat instead of buying a washer and dryer (we told them we were saving money for the washer and dryer and would buy one when we had enough money). They laughed and said we could buy on credit – we chose not to – they were our age, had been married at approx. the same time we had and they had a house and all that house needed – they also had a huge mortgage and bills. Ten years later, the husband lost his job and the stress that took on them was horrendous. He committed suicide. I am not saying this was necessarily the reason why he did what he did, obviously he must have had issues in spite of this, but it did teach me to be satisfied with what I have. And be happy with it. Our cars (2 of them) are over 10 years old – we have almost now saved enough money to buy a new one which we will do – but we do not care if all our friends have newer cars now – we ‘pay as we go’ and that is enough. We have a different type of life perhaps – but we are satisfied. We also stand up and fight for any injustices (poverty for those marginalized, etc.). It is all about loving ourselves enough to not care what others might think.