Several years ago, after the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean, a friend and I were having a conversation. He had gone to Sri Lanka and had done some volunteer work to help out the people there. I was telling him some of my troubles and he told me that he had seen some Sri Lankan men go to the devastated sites to recover some wood to make it into some crafts to sell at the market. To my shame, I thought at the time, ‘How can I relate to these people half-way around the world, whose only resource was wet wood?’.

I see this as especially shameful since there have been so many times in life when I have just not realized how much I have been blessed with. It has been a constant struggle for me. My “needs” and wants have been always clamoring in my ears and I have always lived with comparing myself to others who seem to have so much more than I. At times, it has also been my job as a salesperson to convince others that THEY have those needs and wants too!

My mother spent some time living in Sweden. She told me that due to their socialist kingdom, one of the biggest social faux paus that a person can commit is to be impatient waiting in line in a supermarket or when on the road. She told me that they even have a mantra/idiom that they say to themselves in such situations that is loosely translated as ‘Enough is enough’ or ‘it is enough’. Now I do not know Swedish so if there is a person who does who wants to set me straight, have at it.

However, one thing is true is that I have never been blessed with seeing life from the perspective of someone from another country who knows that enough is enough and who are contented with relatively modest things. Granted not everyone from a country like Sri Lanka thinks that way. A lot of people from countries like that have the attitude, ‘Yankee go home, but take me with you!” We all need to be able to count our blessings on a daily basis in wherever we find ourselves. Counting our blessings has actually been scientifically proven to create psychological health and wellness. (http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article4164717.html)

Lack of contentment and feeling like you cannot get any satisfaction is part of the human condition, no matter how hard we try. How can we learn to live so that we are more thankful, more trusting, yet not be lazy or live life as a wandering generality? According to Joel Osteen, being thankful should not lead to laziness but it means trusting God even when things do not go our way (this reference is from a 2010 daily calendar of his). We strive to better ourselves, we strive to earn a promotion, and yes, to have things. But if it does not work out the way we want it to, we trust that our labors have not been in vain if we did our work unto the Lord. A Biblical support to this would be

Psalm 90:17: May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us– yes, establish the work of our hands!

There is another technique that has served me well since my college days. When I get really depressed (though I know I should do it when I am not depressed also) I write down ten things I am thankful for and five things I need to work on. There have been times I feel I have really had to stretch for things to be thankful for. But it is in this stretching that I have learned that contentment and being thankful for the little things is so important. When all I have to be thankful for is food, water, clothes to wear, and faith, hope, and love, it is then that I realize that my life is so much similar to the man’s in Sri Lanka who has nothing but wet wood to make into crafts at the market. It is then I realize that enough is enough and that I don’t really need many of the things that I think I do. And that seems to be the biggest blessing of all.

1 Timothy 6:6 : But godliness with contentment is great gain.

——-W.