PERSPECTIVE

Photo credit: http://www.metmuseum.org

Times are tough money is tight the economy is broken. My 14 year old has heard this poor mouth probably as long as he can remember.

Yesterday - as many days - I had the opportunity to listen to an elder farmer chew the fat about the Old Days (it's actually one of the perks of my job). This gentleman said something similar to what I've heard dozens of times before but ... his words stuck with me. I couldn't shake them. All day I kept hearing him say, "I'm 78 years old, been on my own since I was 14..."

Did I mention that my Young Son is 14? I asked him this morning, "Can you imagine being On Your Own?" For a moment he had a twinkle in his eye. No doubt ... thoughts of being his own master, never having to clean his room, staying up all night if he chose ... I'm sure those ideas ran through his mind. Briefly. The twinkle dimmed as the gravity of the idea sunk in. Over the course of 15 minutes we had one of the best conversations we've had in a while.

So the elder farmer was on his own at 14, in rural Alabama, in 1950. Pictures of soda shops and bobby socks do not come to mind.

I try to imagine my Young Son rising with the sun to go to work till dark in a field or a lumber yard - walking barefoot there and back. I try to imagine him cooking the squirrel he shot for dinner over a fire and sleeping under the stars.

I try to imagine him working for $3 per day. I try to imagine myself working for that - and trying to get by. And it not being enough. And having to let my 14 year old go On His Own - because I can't afford to feed him.

But here we sit in America in 2014 lamenting that times are tough money is tight the economy is broken. Because we're struggling to make the mortgage AND pay the housekeeper. Because we can't get a new car this year. Because the kids have to use last year's iGadget.

Because we're spoiled and ungrateful.

Because we fail to appreciate what we do have.

Because we're so caught up in things that we sometimes forget people.

We forget what real struggle is. We send our kids to school in their Fifty Dollar Jeans and Hundred Dollar Shoes and we cry over how hard we had to work at the office just to make those ends meet. We don't think about how fortunate - or blessed - we really are.

Maybe we need a change in Perspective.