If It Ain't Broke ...

Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got." - Teddy Roosevelt

I was brought up in the home of a medical doctor. Dad made a good living and provided just about everything we wanted as I was growing up. But the fact is that he and my mother scrimped and saved just to get through Medical school and it affected both of them and the way our family treated money. I don’t waste anything nor am I a spendthrift. When my wife and I first got married, we had more conflict over money management than probably any other issue – that was 30 years ago and things have changed drastically in the past three decades.

I was just sitting here watching TV and saw an AD for the latest and greatest phone. It occurred to me while I was watching, that I never wear out my phones, I just trade them in on new ones with more and better features; the same is true of cameras, computers and the list goes on. How about you? Our culture is used to “trading up” instead of “wearing out” the things we use in our life.

What about non-technology like clothes or cars and maybe even relationships? We had some dear friends who seem to have traded us in on new friends about 2 years ago. What’s up with that? When we asked why we don’t get together anymore, the reply was that they were moving into a different season of their life. It wasn’t just us. They dropped out of church and don’t communicate with most of their old circle of acquaintances. Weird!

I see this occasionally in marriages too. One spouse just trades their husband or wife in on a new model. I don’t get it. Well maybe I can understand getting a new phone, but not a new life! Figure out how to make your life better by you becoming better, not by ditching those who love you. That will never work, because you are still stuck with you and that was probably what was broke in the first place… and maybe some of that other old stuff is worth hanging on to for awhile longer? I’m still waiting for my old friends to wake up and come back home.

"Figure out how to make your life better by becoming a better person."