photo by {the gloaming}
Some people who win the lottery or come in to money often find themselves wholly unsatisfied. They can no longer tell the difference between true friend and foe. There is no drive to get out of bed and work for the next pay cheque. They find their children spoilt and with no sense of the worth of a pound/dollar. Mo’ money mo’ problems as Biggy once said.
In the same breath, being broke offers even more suffering. The stress of not knowing how you are going to make ends meet, the strain on relationships and the prospect of losing the roof over your head becomes too real.
I have been thinking a lot recently about how grateful I am that my life is not dictated by money; whether that be too much or too little. I am so lucky to have enough. That doesn’t mean I don’t struggle at times and I have to budget to get by. I shop at thrift stores (ok I admit, I do it for the joy of thrift as well as to save money!), my wedding dress cost £50, a holiday is not an annual event, a takeaway is a treat and I save up for bigger purchases. And I love to save up. It makes the thing you are saving for that much sweeter when you finally achieve it.
Whenever I am worried about a bill or the car needs a repair I remind myself it is a First World Issue, and therefore in the grand scheme of things a non-problem. There are people, countless people, who wake up knowing that they may not eat today. They aren’t disappointed that they have to cut back on their daily Starbucks- they just wish they had water to drink that won’t kill them. And the problems aren’t all thousands of miles away in the Third World; they are happening on our doorstep. There are people in our own towns whose biggest worry is not how they are going to afford a new alternator for their Fiesta but how they are going to escape from the prisons of human trafficking, hard drug addiction and terminal illness. Many of them suffer alone and in silence.
If you have spare change in your pocket, in your car or on in a dish at home then you are in the top 11% of the world’s richest people as over three-quarters of the world live on less than 2 bucks a day.
We are so rich that we buy bottled water- something we can get for free from a tap!
A humbling thought that kind of puts things in to perspective for me.
So the purpose of this post is to ask you to write a list of all the things you are truly grateful for from your health to your Harry Potter book collection, no matter how small. It can even be things you don’t like! If you hate your job you can still be thankful for it- we live in a time when there are many people out of work who would like nothing more than to be useful and earn a wage.
Reflect on what you have instead of what you don’t. Counting your blessings every day will leave you on a high that no stuffed bank account, luxury car or designer handbag could provide.
I am writing this, you are reading this. We have enough.
photo by .Delight
inspiration, life, miscellany
blessings, enough, grateful, life, money, personal development, reflection, self improvement, thankful, wealth
