Reflections

I promise I will get back to writing about food and my thoughts on healthy eating. It's been a little challenging with time in the last week. But my plan for this blog is a place to ramble about healthy eating AND living so I thought I'd share some reflections I had after our family's recent trip to Toronto, Canada to visit my huband's family.

I've always enjoyed visiting Toronto. It is a beautiful city...I love the skyline, the clean streets, the feel and rhythm. It's incredibly multi-cultural, not pockets of ethnicities here and there, but everywhere together. We went to a small park for a few minutes and it was amazing to see about 10 different cultures represented in the 10 children playing there. In the small town we live in with not much diversity, my biracial children fit in well there.

With 5.2 million people it's busy, lots of traffic, lots of having to really watch your kids to make sure they don't run off and you can't see them. Toronto is trying to be a green city so every family has to buy 3 different trash cans, one for regular garbage, one for food and compost, and one for things that can be recycled. At the grocery store, you have to bring your own cloth bags or pay for plastic ones...I like that rule, wish it would catch on here! There's other stuff they're doing, too. Every little bit of saving counts!

Anyway, there is a lot to see and do.

I had an interesting conversation with my brother-in-law, who pretty much knows everything that is happening in the city, knows where all the events are, etc...He was saying how kids today have everything at the touch of a button, the internet, texting, food, cell phones, video games, etc...They don't know what it's like to have to wait for anything. Even my generation has some of these issues (hence, part of the reason for our economic housing downturn). Those who live in Toronto and other large cities, have tons to do. There is always something going on somewhere.

And yet, they're bored.

The day after I got back from Toronto, I was listening to a speaker at a professional development (I am in the education field), and he was talking about the days when he was a kid growing up in the South without much to do. He told stories of what he and his friends did with a cardboard box, the games they invented, how they reused things over and over. He was an amazing storyteller and put a longing in my heart to have lived back then, or experiency that life today.

His story and point were similar to the conversation I had with my brother-in-law. Even with so much around us to do and get quickly, why are people still bored and restless? Why can't we be satisfied with the simple things in life? Why is there such a need for more and more?

I used to come back from Toronto feeling like I was missing something, somewhere. Like I wanted to go and DO stuff. This time, I came back content with my simple life in a somewhat small town. While we live pretty simply, we're not like Laura Ingalls Wilder, mind you, I really want to strive to live MORE simply. To have my kids find joy in the small things, to be creative thinkers and not button pushers. Don't get me wrong, I won't go back to a dial-up modem, but do you know what I mean? Let's just live simply, and stop complicating life with stuff and wanting more. Let's go back to the good ole' days, so to speak, where we had to be more creative and didn't need to have everything immediately.

Am I crazy? Or does anyone else know what I'm talking about?