About a decade ago, we had upgraded the car Elli would be driving to work every day. With the odometer on the old rig pushing 300,000 miles, the dealer had declined to take it in trade. For whatever reason we found ourselves running an errand in the “old” car. I commented to her that there had been a time in our lives when we would have been ecstatic to have a car this good.
Elli is not picky about cars and would have been content to keep driving the older car.
“If it starts when I want it to start, has a heater, air conditioning and a radio that works, and power door locks, I’m fine.”
That someone she knows has a new car has never been a reason for her to pine for new wheels. She once told me that one of the things she’s most grateful for is that whichever vehicle has been hers to drive has been reliable. She went on to say that lots of her friends are stuck driving a car they don’t trust, and their husbands don’t seem to think it’s important.
And so goes life. Someone will always have a bigger house, a newer car, better health and more money. And each of us will also have a newer car, a bigger house and more money than others. That’s life. And one of the things that makes life “fair,” is that life is not “fair.”
November is the month that includes the Thanksgiving holiday. A time to reflect and ponder our position in life, and to give thanks for all we have. One of the things I’m most grateful for is the ability to be content with and find joy in what I can afford.
Someone posted a drawing showing a boy in a car looking out the window at someone in a newer, flashier, faster and more expensive car. Wishing he had a car like that. Another boy, riding on his bicycle, saw the first boy in his “kinda clunky” car and wished he had a car. Another boy, on the sidewalk, saw the boy on the bike ride by and wished he had a bike. Another boy sat in his wheelchair in a balcony overlooking the sidewalk and wished he could walk.
I’m aware of a group that, among the other charitable things they do, provide wheelchairs to those who can’t walk and have seen the joy in the faces of some receiving their own wheelchair, that’s really theirs to keep.
How do we mentally navigate in a world with so much diversity of wealth?
We just passed our 54th wedding anniversary. First one that both of us forgot until a few days later. A friend had the misfortune of coming home one day and finding that his wife had packed and moved out. Claims he had no idea that his marriage was in trouble.
As we celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries, we need to be mindful of those who don’t have what we do. Life is unfair. But what gives it a modicum of fairness, is that life’s unfairness to me is different from life’s unfairness to you.
Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for what we do have.
For the time I was eastbound on I-84 approaching the Baker City rest area. It had been snowing and blowing and was just below freezing. That stretch of the freeway had snow blowing across it, leaving mini-drifts just a few inches tall. Then the trucks would come and run over the wet drifts, leaving a hard lump of snow, over which the minidrifts formed again.
By the time I got there, to what looked like snow blowing cross the road, it was really a patchwork of very slippery speed bumps. My backhaul was a load of roofing product so there was enough weight to have some control. The bumps of packed snow were so thick that I was mostly airborne, doing my best to aim for what looked like black pavement ahead.
I glanced in my mirror and saw my trailer (I was running truck and full trailer, not a semi) was off to one side at a 90-degree angle to the truck. As I hit smooth yet still icy pavement, my trailer swung back behind me and off to the other side before settling back to following the truck after a number of oscillations.
The truck following called out on the CB radio, “That was close!” I answered, “Yessir! That was too close!”
That was 40 years ago. I’m still grateful I made it home that day.
