Attitude Of Gratitude

Hubby and I took a little time to get out in the beautiful fall weather we had this weekend. We traveled up to Norris to the Museum of Appalachia. I have been wanting to take some pictures there and my hubby was so sweet to wait around while I took a little over 100 pictures.

I'll be sharing a few of them over the next few weeks.

The theme of many of the post on Frugal Fridays and other blogs has been about knowing when we have enough and being wise about how much we bring into our homes. That message was brought home to me when I saw this little cabin on display. It is one of the smallest buildings ever placed on the Register of Historic places.

I wish that I had thought to get the name of the man who lived there. There is a picture by the door of him sitting on the front porch. They try to be as accurate as possible when they arrange the inside of the cabins for display. They use photographs as reference and they display all period pieces. This is probably a very good portrayal of how he lived. I stood in the doorway looking at the house that is smaller than the smallest bedroom in my house and realized that a man lived his life there. Everything he owned was sheltered in those walls. I felt humbled. I was awed by it. I felt gratitude for what I have and at the same time I felt ashamed.

Ashamed of the fact that I couldn't fit everything in the closets of my home in that house. Ashamed that I have a storage building in my backyard almost twice the size of this man's home.

When did we change so? When did "stuff" take over our reason for living? We always seem to need bigger, better and more of it. We expect it. We think we deserve it. We cannot have gratitude for what we have because we expect to have more.

Meanwhile, it consumes us, controlling our lives with longer work weeks to pay for it all, often at jobs we hate but can't afford to quit. It infringes on our free time by requiring constant maintenance and upkeep of our "investments" .

We claim to admire and respect people who are good and honest. The ones to whom family means so much. People who live simple, grounded, purposeful lives. But it is the ones who live lifestyles exactly the opposite who cover the pages of our magazines .

They are the ones who you can't turn on the TV without having to see, everything they do makes for headlines and is talked about on even the news channels. They are the ones so many aspire to be like.

I think if this man were here today, living in his little house, content with the basic necessities of life, I don't think many of us would look favorably on him. I think the labels of lazy, shiftless, and possibly even crazy would be used liberally and often.

Would I want to live in a tiny little house like that? Probably not. Could I? If I had too.

It would be painful. It would take a major shift in lifestyle. I would like to think I could do it. I hope that I could do it. I pray to cultivate the attitude that I would need. That's a beginning isn't it?

“Each of us will one day be judged by our standard of life -- not by our standard of living; by our measure of giving -- not by our measure of wealth; by our simple goodness -- not by our seeming greatness.”

William Arthur Ward