Lessons from Life

An e-mail I received today:

MARRIED FOR 42 YEARS

After being married for 42 years, I took a careful look at my wife one
day and said, "Honey, 42 years ago we had a cheap apartment, a cheap
car, slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10-inch black and white TV,
but I got to sleep every night with a hot 19-year-old gal.

Now I have a $500,000 home, a $45,000 car, nice big bed and plasma
screen TV, but I'm sleeping with a 61-year-old woman. It seems to me
that you're not holding up your side of things."

My wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a
hot 19-year-old gal, and she would make sure that I would once again
be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, sleeping on a
sofa bed and watching a 10-inch black and white TV.

Aren't older women great? They really know how to solve your mid-life
crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPCx7NgvCZk

It don't get no better than that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXlsFwHDPww

I was in a members-only store yesterday, and saw a five-pound package of sliced cheese, marked for $8 and change. That same kind of cheese, same size, same number of slices, sells in most stores for more than $15.

Why such a difference? Because of a $40 membership fee?!?

There's a members-only furniture store chain that slashes the prices of furniture, too. The membership fee for that store is in excess of $1,000.

Is this why the rich people in this country get all these good deals? They pay these membership fees, and they can get good quality products at low prices, while the rest of us have to pay ridiculously high prices for mediocre- and low-quality products.

I saw prices yesterday that I haven't seen in more than ten years.

Why? Why there, and not at my local stores?

Somebody answer this question. Somebody explain this to me.

Everything's moved in, as of yesterday. Ten men from my church loaded up my furniture, moved it, and helped me to arrange my living room and bedroom furniture. Two little children helped me to place drawers into chests and dressers, a lady sprinkled fire ant poison on some ant hills in my yard, another lady brought me some soup to eat for supper Friday night, another lady brought me some homemade bread and an aloe plant, her husband sent me a curtain rod, and my new next-door neighbor's uncle mowed my front yard for me yesterday without even being asked.

It is very, very hard for me to accept help from people. I've lived alone a great deal of my life, and have had to learn to do things myself, like fixing my car, fixing a toilet or sink, replacing doorknobs, and such. In the last three years, there have been more random acts of kindness done for me than in all my entire life previous to that. Maybe I'm just noticing it more. I don't know.

One of the things I've really had to learn is that it is genuinely okay to need and accept help. And to ask for it. And when help is offered and accepted, I don't have to go to extravagant lengths to express my gratitude. Sometimes a simple thank you is sufficient. Other times, a cold drink of water, or a simply-worded thank you note. A couple of dollars for gas money when I've tagged along somewhere. Every now and then, a homemade meal of soup and cornbread. And sometimes, I just need to show up when someone else needs help, and apply the skills I've learned in having lived by myself so much. Or offer a shoulder to cry on. Or a gentle, warm hug.

I'm still very uncomfortable with asking for help, but I'm getting better at accepting it when it's offered, and expressing gratitude for it. And I've learned that it takes a lot of love to be willing to help each other like I was helped this weekend.

I wish you could have seen this. It was truly amazing.