Wanting a Sunday

Sundays are easy for me, as far as shopping goes. We just take it easy.
It leaves a great deal of time for thinking.
That can have its drawbacks because I can question all the decisions I have made during the previous week.

A while back there was a program on PBS that placed certain families in different places, recreating the living conditions of the time and seeing if these groups could develop communities and survive as those who lived in these conditions. One was a Victorian home, situated in England, I believe. One was a Texas Ranch House. . . in the late 1800's. One was on the Prairie, during the mid nineteenth century. There was even a program with a community placed in the Pilgrims time on the East coast. I was interested in the different adaptations the people made in their communities. Often they were assigned roles . . . servants, landowners, aristocracy.

There were so many conflicts during the different programs because people struggled with the assignment of class and station. So many people of today have no idea how to live and cope with conditions that made them uncomfortable. I was particularly entertained with a pair of teenage sisters from Los Angeles who actually spent the time in their prairie household to create mascara . . . because they could not live without it. They spent time and resources making mascara instead of gathering and chopping wood or cooking, gardening, doing what it takes to live in that environment. I wonder why.

These are the questions I ponder when I consider what sacrifices I am willing to make in order to achieve what I set out to do. I think I take much of the ease of my life for granted, primarily because it is. Yes, I work hard and try to instill a healthy work ethic in my children, but we certainly live in a world of privilege and richness. It isn't much of a sacrifice to manage the day to day living. I wonder how much of our economic woes now could have been avoided if we all would have taken a step back and deprived ourselves of some of our wants. We are in a want over need state. Too much mascara, perhaps. When did that become a need?