When I look back on my childhood, I can think of many things I'm thankful for. Ironically, I'm particularly thankful I didn't have many things that most people would value. We always hear money can't buy happiness but deep down, we can all think of a couple things that would make us happy if only we could afford them. Opportunity is probably the closest thing to happiness money can buy. Aside from that, I'd rather hold onto my memories of baking mud pancakes in the sun, turning bedsheets into tents and melting crayons together on our metal slide in Arizona.
I have a recent fascination with reading YouTube comments for my favorite videos, and tonight I indulged in a comment stream for a scene from Garden State. Someone mentioned that aside from Garden State's amazing soundtrack (it changed my life when I was 16), its implied commentary on wealth vs. squalor is its most brilliant quality. I never consciously recognized the movie's contrast between the emptiness of affluence and the satisfaction of a simple life rich in love.
By no means am I saying that a financially secure upbringing means emptiness; on the contrary, it can allow people to focus on deeper levels of fulfillment, beyond physiological and security needs. But without the many hardships of my childhood, I might never have learned to appreciate the small things. I do stop to smell the roses. White roses usually smell amazing. And the scent of fresh dirt always brings me a sense of nostalgia, to those mud pancakes drying on the fence as I leaped through the cool streams of our sprinkler.
One day, whether I live in a crumbling apartment or a sparkling house, I hope instead of staring at the multicolored pixels of a computer screen, my children try to melt their crayon sets into multicolored blobs. Sometimes we learn the most when life is messy.
