Enough?

Enough?
by Karen Beth Pike, Columnist

"Taking Care"

October 28, 2003

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

I'm not entirely sure where this quote originated, but there is much wisdom in those words. In days gone by, people made things they needed from what they had on hand. There was no Wal-Mart close by, no fast food chains or road rage. Hard to get angry with the back end of a horse - especially since that horse was your transportation! One of the many nice things about having a horse drawn carriage is that the horse knows the way home and willingly takes you there. I'm not suggesting that we should all return to the horse-drawn carriage days, but there is a point where the pursuit of the newfangled forgets the value of the old ways.

The idea of making the things we need is certainly not new, but how many of us even know how anymore? The art, home economics and other truly useful curriculum are being jettisoned from schools. Where are the children learning these skills, or are they learning them at all? There are few people that cook from scratch anymore, and the vast array of pre-prepared, chemical laden, packaged foods simply astonishes me. I know very few people who do any mending anymore, or even know how to sew on a button. We hire repairmen to do things our fathers and mothers did for themselves. As we become fatter and lazier, there is always someone hawking some new pill or get-rich-quick scheme (or scam) to snare the unsuspecting. We fill our bodies with junk food, we fill our homes with stuff we seldom use, and then sell it for pennies on the dollar at the next garage sale - sometimes with the tags still attached.

What have we become with our freeways, our cars and other toys? As a nation we are deeply in debt, the latest figures are showing that people are spending 135% of their earnings. Perhaps to keep up with the neighbors or to buy that fancy new house when the current one is really still meeting the needs of the family? We hire things done that used to be something that brought families together - things like landscaping - we used to plant and tend our own flowerbeds, now it is considered too much trouble to bother with, yet we still want the beauty. Are we perhaps cankering our own souls in the rush toward having it all?

Doing without is something that is nearly unknown in society now. Immediate gratification of all desires seems to be the aim of advertising and education these days. Much is made of the ease of obtaining credit for some new thing; no mention is made of the pain of the payoff of that debt with the obscene rates of interest that are charged for consumer debt. I saw an offer recently that didn't even mention the interest rate… curious, I inquired, and found a 40% rate on cash advances on that particular credit card. I was stunned, and yet I'm not really surprised by this. Bigger, better, faster, more has replaced whatever common sense used to exist in our society. We are bombarded with advertising - everywhere we look, someone's commercial message is waiting for us to have a moment of weakness or boredom where we dial the 800 number to gratify ourselves with a token pleasure that can be bought - the price spread out over time.

I wonder sometimes, as I watch the cars whizzing by on the freeway, if anyone even notices the beauty all around us. The trees are glorious in their fall colors, the sparkle of the frost on the ground in the morning and the stars glittering in the pre-dawn sky. We have so much that costs us nothing. Our lives, our health, our minds and our emotions are things that God gave us freely - and yet we attach more importance to the things that money buys and can be easily replaced. We say we don't have time for our families, that we're too busy. I don't understand that, our families and relationships are all we really have in the final reckoning. The quality time argument leaves me completely mystified. What happened to the grand old tradition of just visiting with one another? Spending time together and building relationships that last is what humanity is all about when the final curtain falls on our lives. We will most certainly be judged… and as Paul taught the Hebrews he said, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2, King James Version)

In the end, that will be enough. ***

Photo of Karen Beth Pike courtesy of the author