“I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.”

– Alice Walker

What is missing in your life?  Are there things on your wish list that feel so out of reach that you doubt they will ever come your way?  Do you look at other people and envy the lives they live rather than being happy for them and celebrating their success?  How can you live an abundant life in the midst of an economic downturn that has you counting pennies rather than dollars?  Too often, I think we see abundance as the accumulation of more and more things.  Sometimes I look around this old house where I raised 8 children and feel as though I’m drowning in a sea of “stuff.”  It can be hard to appreciate the things we have when there are so many of them that they overwhelm us with the burden of caring for them.  In the midst of all these things, I pause to think of which ones I really care about and which ones could be gone tomorrow and never missed.  The second list numbers in the hundreds; the first could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

Last week, I spent some time collecting all the pencils and pens that had taken up residence in corners around the house.  It is amazing to see how many pencils one family can accumulate from a system where students are rewarded with colorful pencils for their classroom achievements.  I think back to the excitement of my elementary school years when, at the beginning of a new marking period, we would receive a fresh, new yellow pencil with an unused eraser.  We would line up at the pencil sharpener and take turns cranking until we had a point that would produce the best handwriting ever.  Then our teacher would give each of us a new writing tablet — newsprint with light blue lines and a coarse cardboard back.  We would take our brand new pencils and use them to mark the back of our tablets with our names.  We guarded these supplies, because they needed to last until the next time we received our report cards.  Now I gather more than 100 pencils that have been left behind by my children.  The school no longer distributes one pencil per quarter, and the ones we buy for school come in packages of twelve.  Sadly, my children and grandchildren will never know the bliss of a brand new pencil with an unbroken eraser.  Instead, they want the newest mechanical pencils to replace the perfectly good ones that now clutter our environment.  We are victims of our own consumerism.

We have allowed advertisers to convince us that we need more and more things in order to find happiness.  We no longer understand the difference between needing something and wanting it.  If we let them tell us that we need things to make us happy, how can we expect to live lives that are any less than miserable?  Alice Walker has it right.  We must teach our hearts not to want things we cannot have.

Last year I read The Color Purple with my daughter.  She was taking a college English class, and her dyslexia slowed her reading significantly enough that I offered to read aloud to her while she took notes.  This led to some humorous moments as the middle-aged white woman from Pennsylvania Dutch Country deciphered the phonetic spelling of the Southern Black characters whose stories were told.  I kept thinking that I would look in the mirror and find Oprah, dressed as Sofia, wagging her finger at me and shaking her head in disapproval.  The effort was well worth making, though; because it introduced us to characters — people — who hungered for things more vital to existence than the pencils and pens and possessions that clutter our lives.  When Alice walker talks about teaching her heart not to want what she cannot have, she speaks of the lack of food, shelter, and dignity that characterizes poverty and oppression.

We all know the name, The Color Purple, but I wonder how often we take a moment to remember the source of that title.  Alice Walker writes:

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about.  But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

Underneath the wanting, underneath the teaching your heart not to want what it can’t have, there exists something that allows each of us to live abundantly.  Abundance is not the result of accumulating more and more things.  Abundance grows from gratitude for the things we have.  Each morning, I take my first conscious breath and discover that I am alive.  That’s a great start!  I have shelter.  I have food.  I even have people who love me.  I have a world to live in that is filled with beautiful things that please my senses and feed my soul.  If I close my ears to the media and open my eyes to the truth, I understand that I live an abundant life; and I am grateful.

As gratitude wells up, I discover that it also is a gift.  When we are truly grateful, we notice more and more abundance to be thankful for.  Would we ever notice the color purple in a field of flowers if we were too busy counting our possessions?  I am left to conclude that the secret to abundance is simplicity.  When we want only the things we truly need, there is more room in our lives for gratitude; and, as Walker says, “…any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”