During these rough economic times...in the last week, we have decided something huge...we are temporarily uprooting our entire family to go back to Chicago (where we are from) and reunite with our best friends! We plan to live with them for a bit too! So now I am looking around our home at all our stuff and wonder what will we do with all our stuff. It reminded me of a wonderful book I read recently, "An Hour To Live, an Hour to Love," by Richard Carlson and his beautiful wife, Kristine Carlson. He also wrote, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff." On page 10 he writes this, "If I had an hour to live, I wouldn't be calling the lawyer who will be handling all my "stuff" after I'm gone. I never really did care for all this stuff anyway. It always seemed like a burden to me, as if I were tripping over it all. There always seemed to be too much of it to deal with. I had to buy it, clean it, store it, keep it, insure it, keep track of it, find places for it, move it around, replace and update it, and now, in the end, decide who gets it next. Who cares?"
Richard and his wife share with us to enjoy and appreciate each day which is a gift. Richard passed away at the age of 45 of a pulmonary embolism. He leaves us with so many valuable lessons...we are so grateful for this book and all his work.
It's making me think about all of our "stuff" and all of our attachments to our stuff. So we are leaving town without most of our stuff and going to see how we manage. It feels like a wonderful lesson in detachment for our family.
These times are teaching us how much we really need and what's really important in life.
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