It is interesting to be in the process of moving and selling almost everything we own the weekend after Thanksgiving. As we are taking stock and making lists of those things we want to take with us or even more difficult to store for the next year or two, we are bombarded with messages about sales and deals and all the things we can buy.
I saw a commercial for a discount club and the woman said "Joining allowed me to afford a better life." When did a better life become something you could buy? I drive from my house in Hawthorne to my mom's in Manhattan Beach almost everyday, and I notice a difference when I cross into MB. The streets are cleaner, there is more green space and everything just feels nicer. The schools are better, there is less crime and I dream of being able to afford a house in this town. But I also notice how many houses are dark at night, and I know that the people who own them are still at work at 8 PM and from the traffic in the morning I know that they left to work as early as 7. The price of these clean streets and good schools is working long hours. Yes it is better when you get home but how much time do they spend home?
What is life if not the sum of our experiences, of our memories. As we start to break apart our house, we pack up those things that hold memories, the painting we bought in Paris, the hand carved tiki man from Hawaii, the family heirloom that has been in my husbands family for longer than he has. And we price to sell those things that we thought made our life "better" the Coach purses, the expensive suits, the dinning room table. Our purse will soon be our pockets, our suits jeans and sweat shirts and our dinning room table a rock. But our life will be better because our memories and experiences from this trip will hopefully have made us more aware of our lives and the lives of other people we meet on the way.
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