When I was growing up, my joys seemed to center around accumulating things…..material things.
We all have that tendency, at least in this part of the world. Something new comes along, bright and shiny, full of bells and whistles, that we use/play with for a while, and then it gets sat down off to the side – maybe used again, but then again, maybe not. For me, it’s videogames. I am terrible at finishing games, yet I tend to get new ones once in a while that look interesting.
What was the last game I finished? Hmm…that would be Watch Dogs: Bad Blood (haven’t finished the main game yet though). Before that, it was Alice: Madness Returns.
I’m pretty close to finishing Watch Dogs (main game) and Assassin’s Creed II, so perhaps I should concentrate on those next. Probably depends on free time.
My main joys in life these days are ones that cannot be bought with money. I enjoy my faith, family, and my friends – my 3F Support System, as I’ve come to know it. Spending time with people and my faith has provided me with more fulfilling days than sitting in front of a screen – although those rare times I binge-play a game, I will literally zone out for an entire night and wonder why there is a glare on my screen all of a sudden, which makes me look over my shoulder and think “Oh crap……….I did that again”.
Lately, I also feel that I want less things – sometimes I see something that I really want for some artsy reason, but most of the time, I get asked what I am going to get when I get paid or somesuch, and it drives them nuts when I tell them that I have all I need.
Now, granted, there are things I would like to do, like fix up my little Subaru. I don’t have many favorite toys around these days, but my little Soobie………oh yeah……that’s my fun pod. It’s small, yet turns on a dime, gets up and boogies, and is a manual/standard shift. I need to get the heater blower fixed in it so I can drive it in the winter time, and then I need to get the inner door handle fixed so I can open it from the inside…….oh, and a replacement seat would be nice. Not sure where I’m gonna find the seat, but I do plan on looking this summer when it warms up. Yes, it’s almost 30 years old, but to me, it’s just not that old – because I was an 80’s teen, and to me, that decade is still relevant. At least it doesn’t have a thousand sensors that scream “fix the engine” whenever one hiccups (yes……..I really do not like sensors in cars). Give me good old gauges any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Maybe as you get older, you tend to want material things less and less, and just enjoy what you do have – perhaps that’s a mechanism that the good Lord built into all of us – we tend to make those life epiphanies as time marches on. Perhaps that’s one of those things I can pass along to my young ones to make them understand that it’s not all about what you get, but rather what you enjoy – and getting doesn’t always equal enjoying for any long period of time.