Black Friday

I was driving home from work yesterday morning, Black Friday, and I saw this old man walking. He had a heavy coat and plastic bag. He may have been poor or homeless or just someone walking around at 7 am the day after Thanksgiving. I had been watching guests at the hotel where I work getting up early since 3 am to go shop. They will be standing in lines and braving large angry crowds to buy merchandise at rock bottom prices. It makes me wonder what the Millennium will really be like when there will be no rich or poor. How different it will be when we will all have what we need and no more. I have so much right now that I really don't need. Christmas is coming and we all seem to have wish lists. We don't really need most of the things we want. There is a book I love which has photos of families from all over the world outside of their homes with all of their belongings. The families in Ethiopia and Mali had so little. The house in Mali was made of dried mud. The family in Ethiopia had a two room mud house. These people represented the average income for people in their countries.

Life changes. The housing crisis has now spread and has become an economic crisis. Life is much less stable than it was a year ago or even six months ago. We are still far above most of the countries in the world, but we are not headed in a good direction. But if we are to have no rich or poor among us, then we will have much less than we have now. I myself have to become used to having less. Maybe not having a car and less clothes. I think the worst thing for me will be fewer books, dvds and no cable. We didn't have cable when I was growing up. We didn't get a dish until I was seventeen, so when I got my own job and my own place to live, we had cable. I did grow up with thousands of books. The first nursery was in a small apartment of my parents and one wall of it was covered in stacked colorful books and they somehow squeezed a crib in there. I keep thinking how hard it would be to sacrifice my books. But then I think of that old man I saw walking home. Are my books more important than food for other people or heat? No. If I miss them, I'll just have to write others. I can make up enough stories in my head to entertain myself, so I could always write them down.