The Good Old Days

I am wondering how many times I have heard the phrase: “I just wish we could go back to the good old days.” Someone usually says this when they are thinking of something wonderful that happened in their past. Perhaps it's because things aren't going so well at present. So I decided to compare the good old days with present day and see what I could find.

My dad's family is from northeast Georgia. My mom's family is from the upstate of South Carolina. Both sides were in rural areas and life was very similar for them in many respects. They lived on farms. To put it better, they lived on someone's farm and worked the land for them. The term is “sharecroppers.” Eventually both sides got their own place to work. You wake up early and have to go milk cows to have milk to drink and cook with. You take the milk and churn your own butter. You plant and work a large garden to have vegetables and raise livestock if you want meat. Now all this means you are having to do lots of manual work. Cows have to be milked and beans have to be plowed and picked. Eggs have to be gathered and cooked and animals have to be butchered and preserved. It's not easy work! If you wanted to go to the bathroom...it was about a hundred feet from the back door with a well beaten path leading to it. If you wanted water...you dropped the bucket into the well and pulled it up yourself. If you want it hot...you put it on the stove. You had to chop wood to keep warm and to cook. I did know some who had access to coal for heating. For cooking...it was always wood.

Life got a bit better with houses being wired for electricity. Stoves and refrigerators helped take a lot of the work out of it. Washing machines took over what a wash bucket and washboard once did. Houses were fitted with plumbing for running water and you no longer had to trod that path to the outhouse. It eliminated the need for chamber pots in the bedroom. Most of us would panic if we had to use what they had to use then.

Today we have our TV's and our music players. Cell phones can go anywhere with us and we feel lost without them. We reheat leftovers in the microwave and complain that it takes all minute! We truly live better than royalty did just a couple of hundred years ago. We travel in hours what it used to take days. If you are cold or hot you go to the thermostat on the wall. You turn it up...turn it down...or turn it off. In case you haven't realized it...these are the “good old days!”

The advances in technology have freed us from a lot of time consuming chores and hardships. They make our lives better is someways and worse in others. Too much idle time is not good for anyone. To try and fit everything under the sun in you schedule is just as destructive. Maybe more. It can make us very impatient. Just be thankful for what you have and use it wisely. We all have a lot more than we realize.

Gratitude

This is a story that I heard in a church I attended many years ago. This has been on my mind a lot lately so I wrote it down to clear my head more than anything else. I don't recall who told it to me or I would credit them here, but it is a story worth sharing.

Once there was this fellow that worked at a factory. He didn't make a lot of money at his job, although, it was an adequate living. As he left the building to the parking lot, he noticed there was a dollar bill laying in the drivers seat of his car. Puzzled, he looked around to see if there was someone there, and he picked up the bill put it in his pocket and went home. The next day, the same exact thing happened. “Someone is doing this just for me!”, he thought. This continued for a couple of weeks. At the beginning of the third week, there was a five dollar bill on the seat. Smiling, he picked it up and put it in his pocket and drove away home. This continued for about a week. The next week, it was a ten dollar bill everyday for a week. He was very excited about this! He was already rushing out to his car everyday just so no one would see that bill on his seat and steal it from him. Right on schedule, the next week there was a twenty dollar bill on the seat. This continued for four days. On Friday that week, he hurried out to his car and there was a one dollar bill on his seat. He was puzzled again. Confusion turned to disappointment, and then to anger. He put the dollar bill in his pocket, slammed the car door and drove away angry.

This story was told to me a long time ago to teach me about being grateful. I wasn't the man in the story, but It could have been me. Sometimes it is me! How grateful am I for the things I receive without asking for them? When life's twenty dollar bill turns into life's dollar bill, can I be thankful? If you noticed, he did nothing for the money, except to pick it up. He wasn't grateful at any time for the money, he was just glad to have it. The family and friends that we have are gifts. Any wealth, prosperity, or health are gifts as well. We should endeavor to do the best that we can with what we have. We get all sorts of blessings we don't deserve or ask for and then get angry when the blessings are taken away. Tell me, what are you thankful for today?