Today is a fantastic opportunity to really show your love-ones how much you love and appreciate them – in a new fashion! Our current society has come up with a synonym-list that seems to have run amok…
Have we – the people – somewhere down the line, lost the ability to show and express real love and appreciation, and instead replaced it with “material things”? Are we buying away from the things in life that really matters?
Material stuff (1)
Yesterday I read a novel named “Gosedjuren” (Cuddly Toys) by the world famous (In Sweden) writer, Fredrik Lindström. It is a reflection on how we treat a newborn child and starts like this:
“He was a much loved and awaited child, and a child can, as we know, never get too much love. The consequence of this was that he, before his second birthday, was the owner of over a thousand things (items)….”
Of course you then get a list of all the things.
Is this the start and the “reference-level” we give our new generations – to buy and consume?
Does a newborn child love you because you provide them with lots of stuff – or do they love you for other reasons? What do you want to be loved “for”?
Material stuff (2)
A very good friend told me a story about the marriage of a friend of his sons. (Complicated)
This friend, originally from Sweden but now living in the US since some years, is going to get married. They want to get married in Sweden so they fly over here. Most of their friends also live in the US, so they arrange that they also can fly over. Then they stage the wedding at a restaurant on the shoreline, dinner afterwards at another historic “restaurant”, brunch next morning at yet another restaurant and of course hotel-accommodations for all at a nearby hotel. Along with all this of course lots of presents, bachelor- and bachelorette-parties and so on.
A question, I don’t want to be a “joy-spoiler”, but – does this married couple love each other more than a couple marrying in a “smaller setting”?
“If you live to be hundred, I hope I live to be hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”
Winnie the Pooh
I have a strong believe in mankind, and I think we are better than this – for a while we only have had a bit of “bad luck when thinking” about these things!
Being in the “Sustainability business” I also think that it is amazing how well true affection and love goes hand-in-hand with a sustainable life – the necessary resources are “within”
That you really Care can only be shown in your actions – it can never be just “a thought” or a “thing”, nor is it something that you can buy!