Perspectives

Perspective is an interesting thing. I've been thinking about it rather a lot lately. This post is kind of me musing; just bringing up food for thought. And food will have something to do with it.



Car with no air better than no car
Hot air better than no air

Overwhelming stores like Kohls and Costco and cars

I would have to say that my recent thoughts about perspectives started with air conditioning. Or lack thereof, actually. We have two vans. This is, I believe, our second summer with it having no air conditioning. Now, I know I live in the North, and believe you me, I am so grateful I don't live any farther South, but it is still hot here in the summer. No air conditioning is not super fun. We had air movement (as in, air blew out of the vents, but it wasn't cool at all), which helped a bit. In the course of trying to fix the issue, at one point, even the air movement was out of commission. That puts things into perspective.

You might think, "just put the windows down" but that isn't always an option for one reason or another. When you're driving around with absolutely no air blowing, even warm air seems pretty good. It's a new perspective that leads to gratitude.

Recently, I was with my mom at Costco. If you don't know what that is, it's a warehouse, buy-in-bulk store. There is SO. MUCH. FOOD. and it's in huge quantities. There's also so much of other things too, but let's focus on the food. I commented to my mom that I wonder what E and D thought when they first went to a store like this.

E and D are two friends of ours who were adopted from Haiti. They spent much of their childhood there and were old enough to remember what living there was like. I can only imagine how overwhelming it must be to someone like them to walk into a store like Costco. I even get a little overwhelmed sometimes.

Other things that overwhelm me a bit when I think about them are clothes and cars. I drive by dealerships with hundreds of cars. More are made every day. I can't wrap my brain around it. How is there enough room for all these cars in our country? Where do the old ones go? Do all these really get sold? Or when I was in Kohl's and there are racks with dozens of the same shirts and then next to it a stack of dozens of jeans and the store just keeps going. Have you ever walked into a toy store? Mind explosion.

I think this could come across as shaming or guilting and that's not at all what I'm trying to do. I hope you don't take it like that. I appreciate thinking about these things now and again because it helps me be grateful and thankful. It helps me realize just how blessed I am. Gratitude is always a good thing.

Do you have thoughts about all this? Have you ever contemplated similar things? I'd love to hear your comments!