“We should get new couches…” I think to myself as I scroll the internet with its pictures of pristine pretty living rooms.
But my good old couches are soft and warm and they fit us all perfectly, even the dog, as we melt into our togetherness and watch tv or play card games. These couches that hold us while we laugh and cry and cuddle together don’t mind being spilled on or scratched, because they already carry what was before and they keep carrying what will be.
My home is old, but it is filled with love. And not just ours, but love from all the years before us. Ghosts of what used to be are mixed with us like yarn weaving a warm sweater. The creaking floors bring me comfort, as if the home is speaking through those creaks. My old home carries me, like a wise and well lived grandmother.
Sometimes we say “We’re a little tight right now, let’s wait until payday…” But we work hard every week at our jobs and we are one of those few lucky humans in a family with healthy children, with parents who are happy together, who love each other and choose each other, and that’s worth more than any more money could give us.
I hear “Look younger, feel prettier!” but the lines on my face are like words on a page, a book of stories from laughing until I cry, from crying until I can't breathe, of lying beneath the sunshine and running through the wind and sleeping deeply with my face smooshed comfortably into a warm pillow at nights. Getting older comes hand in hand with looking older and anyone who knows loss knows that getting older is a pure gift.
I hear “Live your dreams, make more money, don’t settle for what you are doing now!” But then I think about the garbage man who waved kindly at our excited toddlers every single week and happily fished at the riverbank downtown during his lunch breaks. I think of the nurse who works nights and weekends and holds the hands of humans who are leaving this world. The teacher who changed our lives when she helped our son through his fifth grade struggles. The little league coaches. The farmer. The kids in some of the poorest countries in the world who live in tiny huts without things like electronics and proper shoes, who are somehow still full of the kind of pure genuine happiness that most of us will never know.
I think we will always live in a world where everything and everyone constantly tells us to have more, be more and do more.
But I think that this can be our greatest rebellion: we can choose to love what we have and to love who we are and we can let that be enough.