Sometimes I think that my adult life so far has been one long challenge to my sense of entitlement. It's like that Eddie Izzard bit: "Look, you're British, so scale it down a bit."
It's frustrating, sometimes. Every time I think I've gained some kind of handle on how, precisely, to move through the world that I live in with comparatively little in the way of material resources, I am regularly witness to the messy results of my incompetence, my lack of fortitude, my weakness.
Going into the Christmas season this year, I realized that we have next to nothing to spend. Mr. T and I dropped the notion of giving gifts to one another long ago, and then giving gifts to adult family members, and now I'm faced with redefining what we do for our children...not just in terms of gifts, but all of the "little" things that add up so quickly: the hot chocolates out, the new ornaments, the festivals, the shows. There isn't room for much.
It's not an easy feeling.
But over the years, entitlement wearing away like the banks of a great river, I have come to look with a grateful eye on exactly these moments. They force me to really look, and to see, and to accept, and ultimately to embrace what is, and to decide whether, why and how that might change.
I don't compare my lot with people who have less. I think that's rude. But I do take inspiration from the people I know that are living creatively on comparatively little. And I take strength from the people who I know that have been boned well and truly by life, then turn around and flip it the bird.
I don't have much to spend on my kids because I'm having a hard time making our budget work. That sucks. I give the price of good quality, clean, healthy, simple food a big old one finger salute: for me, for my friends who can't find jobs, for my friend who came down with a big ol' case of MS when he was twenty-five and found his young ass in a wheelchair, unable to work.
I know that where I'm at is a result of many factors and events, some of my own choosing, or making. I've made sacrifices for totally unnecessary things like ballet classes for my daughter, and for bigger, more controversial things like being my kids' full-time caregiver. Like homeschooling.
But when my eyes are open, and I'm full-up with gratitude and black humor and the wisdom that rubbing elbows with hardship has given me, I can see that this wrestling match of mine, learning how to be without, is kind of glorious.
You wake up in the morning feeling like shit because you're afraid you're going to disappoint your children on Christmas morning, but then in the afternoon you realize that your kids spend all of their fighting energy on a large packing box, which is alternately a rocket ship, Peter Rabbit's house, a thing that they sit in while their dad pushes them around the house, a place to curl up with a book and a flashlight.
I reach down into my heart, back into the long history of my ancestors, into the primate resourcefulness of every living person on this planet, I consider how I might make a beautiful morning for them out of what is available to me, and then I think:
The money we have buys us food, shelter, water, safety, and a fair measure of pleasure and comfort. More might make us even more comfortable, perhaps even a few degrees happier, but it could never buy us back these slow warm days together, or make us better people, or take us on any of the myriad journeys we might have in a box.
I struggle, and I choose, again, to be poor.
And I choose, again, to be happy.
To have traveled such a tangled, gnomish road to find a happy heart is humbling.
We are happy. We have enough. We are living the glorious humble life of a plain brown box.