The Best Things in Life Are Free?

"If everyone cared and nobody cried, if everyone loved and nobody lied, if everyone shared and swallowed their pride, then we'd see the day when nobody died." - Nickleback

I've been thinking about the way our cultures used to be. We lived with our families and friends in communities, where it was true that the most important thing we had - each other - was free.  Over time, that changed.  I didn't do research to determine how it all happened, but here we are today with the biggest game-changer, cars.  We drive far to our jobs, we live across the country from our friends and family.  Technology makes it all better.  I Skype every day with my father - THE MAN WHO CREATED ME AND RAISED ME - who lives in North Carolina, and one of my very dearest friends - THAT I'VE KNOWN SINCE MIDDLE SCHOOL - who lives in New York.  But all of these advances have created this distance.  Is it a good thing? 

I spent $50 in gas money to drive to Port Huron for work, where no students showed, so I will get paid $30 in mileage, but nothing more.  So, essentially, I just spent $20 to be alone for 4 hours.  So, of course I was thinking about life and things.  On my drive home, I found myself thinking about how I would love a garnet ring, because it's my son's birthstone and it's a beautiful gem. That's where it all started, because you see, I have a mental list of "things", monetary priorities, I'll call them, and a garnet ring falls exactly thousands of dollars behind everything else and it made me sad to realize that that is something I won't have. BUT, then I said to myself, what is really the most important thing? Because I know it's not money, and it's not "stuff". It's people. It's family and friends. But those people are all so busy and so invested in their own lives and "things" and so far away.  And really, it is not free for me to have those best things in life, any longer. I'm saving money to visit my friend in New York. I gravely miss my friend who lives in Chicago, and I'm trying to set up a visit out there in December, but again, I have to save money to do that and I just don't have any to spare. Even tomorrow, I'm driving to visit a friend who lives in the same state, but it will still cost me about $30 to drive there and back because she lives 45 minutes away! And so, I had to realize today that the best things in life aren't free. At least, not anymore, not in my life time, not now that I'm an adult and I don't see all my friends at school every day and I don't come home to my family every night. Honestly, it makes me want to live in a commune somewhere. Give up tv, Internet, cars. Maybe I should be an Amish person.  

And then, to top it all off, so many of those "best things" have been lost to -me. My friend Ben started dating a girl who eventually would not allow him to talk to any of his friends or even see his family much of the time and when he tried to be friends with me on Facebook one day and I told him the truth about how I'd been feeling all that time, he took back his friend request all together.  And he was not the only one like that. Then there's my best friend who met a man from Mexico, moved 9 hours away and isolated herself from her friends, then sort of went crazy. I don't really talk to her anymore. 24 years of friendship gone there. My dad is separated from his wife. I lived with them my last year of high school and she became a second mother to me. Now, she told my dad that she wants to move forward with her life, which means that she has chosen to no longer have a relationship with me.  Today, I was cleaning and realized that I had a picture of her and myself together from my wedding day in a frame in the dining room and I sadly took it out of the frame and replaced it with a picture of my husband and my son when he was 2 months old.  

I need to stop for a second and preface all of this by saying that by no means do I forget about what I DO have, while thinking these things through. My son is my shining star, my sunshine and the light of my life. My husband is part of my foundation. And the friends and family that I do have, I love dearly and appreciate, no matter where they live or how much money they cost me ;). I just have to acknowledge the losses. I have to figure out how to make my life fit with my values. I have to process the grief. I have to wonder why we as a race of humans have allowed ourselves to stray so far from what's most important.  It makes me shudder with tears and sadness to think about the fact that as my son gets older, he will grow into a world where he doesn't get all the hugs and kisses and smiles that he gets now.  He won't have the arms around him every day that he does now.  And I can say from my own experience that it gets hard and lonely when you once had that basic need met and then you go out into a world that doesn't work that way anymore and doesn't meet that basic human need. I can only hope and pray that I will be there for him along the way and that he will build a foundation of friends around him that can provide for some of that. 

So, realistically, I wish that I could've sat in the living room or out on the deck with a group of friends and/or family this evening, eating good food and sharing in each other's lives. Learning more about each other and what we all have to offer each other as a connected group. Or maybe just on the floor with my son and my husband, finger painting something together, and watching our son learn that we are a unit, this family, and that time together is more important than any garnet ring.