I had another post all written up, but I’m opting not to publish it.  It was rather whiny and petulant, and while it ended on a fairly decent note, I’m fairly certain it was not worth reading.  Suffice to say that living in a 23′ trailer with no indoor plumbing and limited power is not the greatest experience in the world, particularly when it is cold and rainy.  However, the experience has encouraged me to think a lot about my sense of entitlement, and how much we create our own suffering because of what we think we should have or be able to do, or because of the deadlines and situations we place ourselves.

For example, why should it be an expectation that I should get to take a shower every day or every couple of days?  The vast majority of humanity, especially over the timespan that humans have been around, never had that expectation.  Why should I expect to have clean, tidy, and non-stained clothes (and lots of them!) at the drop of a hat?  Why should I expect to have acres of counter space, a nice spacious oven with an accurate temperature control, and a refrigerator that doesn’t have to be reset several times a day?  Most of the world does without these things, and many have probably never even seen such luxuries…  what is it that makes me so special that I deserve these things, and can justify getting grumpy and frustrated when I don’t have them for what should be only a short period in my otherwise middle-class American life?  All I can point to is the luck or accident (or fate, I suppose, depending on one’s perspective) of my birth into a fairly  middle-class American family.
At the same time, I have to keep myself in check a bit, because it is easy to move from thinking about what other people lack to pitying them for lacking these “essentials”.  Because if I go too far into that, it can almost start sounding like the only way to live a good life is to have running water, a warm, spacious, cozy home and easily accessible, easy to use laundry facilities.  At that point, I’m about as ridiculous as some billionaire socialite who can’t imagine how all the little people live without an army of servants, a summer home, and a private jet.  Certainly, some of these things might improve one’s quality of life (whatever that means, exactly) but they certainly come at a cost (and not just a financial one) as well.

So, at this point I feel rather unsettled.  I feel grateful when it rains that I have a metal roof over my head rather than canvas and a tarp, but I still get easily frustrated at the lack of space and the general dirtiness in the trailer.  When we wake up in the morning and find that it is 44 degrees in the trailer (and 32 outside), I’m very grateful that we can kick on the heater and bring the temperature up quickly to something a bit less bone-chilling.  However, I am still very tempted to throw things off the counter when I yet again run out of counter space while I’m making a nice, warm, and healthy dinner for my family (and thank God that I can do that for my family!).  So, there are a lot of contradictions, and a lot of challenges, but a lot of blessings too.  And really, isn’t that the story of our lives here on Earth?