Living well. It doesn't only mean managing your money, but your mindset. Western culture definitely has the tendency to indoctrinate citizens with ideas of big this, fancy that and high-tech whatchamabobs that make grandeur not only desired but expected.
Writer Sarah Bird expostulates upon the topic of "does more stuff always mean more happiness?" in the latest issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. Discussing her own fears about approaching college tuition for her children and admittedly writing that she's "trimmed back on enough lattes this year to give Starbucks its first negative performance in the coffee juggernaut's history", Ms. Bird offers readers a breath of relief through ancedotes about her money-saving, living-well mother, Mrs. Colista, "Collie Mac" Bird.
She might possibly allow that, yes, things are bad and we may, indeed, be heading for a depression. But while it could very well be a good depression, Nurse Bird certainly would have to remind me that it most certainly will not be a Great Depression.
Comparing her then to my now helps me appreciate how relative a sense of economic security is, how our monetary mental health is all based on expectations. And how dramatically ours have changed: Although our consumption has soared a whopping 45 percent in the last 20 years, the proportion of American citizens reporting they are "very happy" has remained the same – about one-third – since 1957.
All right, Collie Mac, I get it. I can't point to actual blood. Maybe the pain I feel is simply a pang from expectations being lowered as I consider a world where every member of the family won't have the luxury of feeling entitled to his or her own personal vehicle; where the median-size house shrinks from nearly 2,500 square feet back to the 1,100 it was in 1949; where (gulp) a college education was considered a privilege, not a necessity. And if family finances demanded it, that education would be sought at the local community college…
For all those things we can't control, my mother had other words of wisdom – words she learned from the boy soldiers who'd lost limbs, friends, health: macht nichts, an old German expression that translates to something like "matters not." For all of us little Birdlets it meant, "If you can't do anything about it, let it go."
So, to all my worries about whether the housing market will totally collapse and gas will end up costing more than Merlot, Collie Mac and I would just like to say macht nichts.
Kelly Buddenhagen knows a thing or two about using glue-dots and cardboard to make a new space bar for a broken laptop, picking frugality over those cute new Macs (sigh). Visit her at The Barefoot Mama for more on living well both inside and out.
Article excerpt, Good Housekeeping, September 2008
Photo: Kelly's darling grandparents, Roy and Rose, in 1955
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