My "Tiny" House

A couple of weeks ago, my very good friend Cathy came to visit from New York with her boyfriend Mark. She brought goodies from her garden- salsa, jam, spagetti sauce etc.-- a bounty to say the least. She also brought a surprizing perspective. As she took the tour of the house, she exclaimed, "It's huge!!"

I looked at her and saw her big eyes and realized that this was quite true. I did a mental inventory and realized I had a couple of competing feelings. One feeling was of pride - a recognition that I am lucky and blessed. The other was of guilt like I have way more than I need.

Cathy lives in a beautifully simple and functional A-frame house in the North Country. She has everything she needs and lives quite comfortably. Her home is a very welcoming place and holds many memories of happy times for me. It is one of those places where you feel comfortable from the get-go. So, to her, my house is HUGE and, I suppose she is right.

Not many days after her visit, Alea (my daughter) had a friend from school over. We were sitting at the table and we were talking about places we have lived and he said, "Yeah we used to live in a tiny house like this when we lived in the city". (He now lives in New Albany, OH where most houses are rather large). We continued with other trains of thought, but it occured to me that I had a feeling of "smallness" when I saw this child's innocent perspective.

Isn't it funny that we can be influenced by other's perceptions and yet have the ability to decide how we see our situation?

We have a choice about how we see what we've got. This is not a new concept but, it was so beautifully displayed for me in this scenerio and served as a reminder to pay attention to these thoughts and feelings.

Actively choose your path of thought, realize that you can pick your feelings.

So, I choose to believe that we live in a big house and I hope that we can fill it with loads of love and appreciation. And most of all, I choose to sit in the realization that we are blessed.