THURSDAY THOUGHTS - Having and Experiencing Are Two Very Different Things

Guest Post...

"I remember finding a plaque in a store once that read, "The most important things in life aren't things." I purchased it and hung it on my wall right between a photo of my three sons and a photo of my Grandma Belle, who died in 1988. I have a difficult time relating to many of the people I see in TV who have nothing better to talk about than their new "things." These may be cars, boats, clothes, or their latest plastic surgery. I saw one particular story about a girl who had almost everything on her body redone. To me her life seemed to be more than shallow.

I read an account of a woman who found a new life after having Cancer. She said that before she became sick she had always felt empty. She said,"That is why I needed to have more and more things. I kept accumulating more and more goods, more and more books, magazines and newspapers, more and more people, which only made everything worse because the more I accumulated the less I experienced.'Have everything, experience nothing.' You could have put that right on my front door. And all the time I thought I was empty because I didn't have enough." When she finished chemotherapy, this woman held a huge garage sale and sold more than half of what she owned. Her friends thought she had gone "chemo-crazy," but doing this enhanced her life. She said, "I had no idea what was in my drawers or on my bookshelves. I did not really know half the people whose home phone numbers were in my phone book either. Many of them never even sent me a card. I have fewer things now, and I know fewer people, but I am not empty. Having and experiencing are very different. Having was never having enough... perhaps we only have as much as we can love."

As I look at our lives now with the economy being so weak, I see that people many times have much less in a material way. Although this has been difficult for some, I think perhaps it may be a healthy scenario in many ways. Perhaps more of us are driven to take a closer look at the blessings we have and to truly experience and love each and every one of them.

Kathy Christensen
Survivor and member of Lifting Hearts
Guest Blogger