Satisfaction in Chaos

I know someone facing a long-overdue and unfortunate divorce. A friend told her to try to think of it as “addition by subtraction.” Gaining more life spirit, happiness, etc. by the removal of the negative energy of the spouse etc. 

I flew to the Left coast Tuesday and the inflight movie was The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith. I was asleep when it started and I did not feel like wrestling the large, elderly Slavic-speaking woman next to me to try to get the headphones in, but I found myself watching it without the sound. There were a few interchanges I would have liked to hear, but honestly I think I really got the story and it touched as well as entertained me. It could have definately made it in the days of silent movies.  However, given the fact I saw reviews that gave it a C+, perhaps I was better off watching it as a silent movie.

Later I was sitting in a restaurant reflecting my parental report card, which guilt requires when work brings me so many states away from my kids. 

I started thinking of some of the ridiculous challenges I met, but that they will have no memory of because they were really young.  Like carrying water most of one summer because the well went dry and we didn’t have money to punch a new one.  Or eating rabbit,venison, milkweed, dandelion greens and the like to make the grocery budget stretch. Cooking for six in toaster ovens, microwaves, hibachis, and electric fry pans because the stove was broken and had to wait for replacement.  And always knowing we still had it a hell of a lot better than a ton of people. 

I wonder how many people even  my age would actually know how to do all those things to get by that I had learned from my grandmom. Of course I suppose they could look it up on the internet…

Then I got to thiniking about the fun my kids had those times when we had no power (due to slow repairs after storms) and so we ate dinner by candle light and listened to old radio shows or old time music on a crank-up transistor radio.  They loved those shows.  Sometimes we’d turn the TV off to listen to them. One daughter even requested a collection of Mystery Theater tapes for her birthday.

After one storm we got the power back and the tv got turned back on I made them watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a couple of Jimmy Cagney movies. At first they were appalled by black and white, by the end they were really getting it.

Back on the Left Coast, the nostalgia passed and I brought my mind back to the fact I need to do my blog entries for this week. I often wonder what people of the 1800’s would think of the conveniences we have and what we do with the time that our “advances” have made.  Then it hit me,  we are subtracting by adding as much if not more than we add by subtraction if we are not careful and delibreate about how we use our advances.

I need to reevaluate whether I have added the right things through my subtraction and not subtracted the wrong things through my additions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 11:37 pm and is filed under KMIIClass. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.