Respecting and learning from older generations

Around Christmas time my grandpa (who I call "Pa") was generous enough to offer me a job helping him type up his writings. For many years he has been a journalist, and on top of that he is an incredibly ingenious man with a story for every occasion.

I grew up just 5 minutes from Pa so got to spend a lot of time with him over the years. There are some stories I feel like I lived, yet every time I see him now I hear new stories that captivate me. He has definitely mastered the art of storytelling. My grandpa's stories and generosity are infamous in our neck of the woods. He is just a wonderful person and has added so much richness to my life and countless others.  

I have typed up about 30 pages of stories for him so far and it is so nice to gain that insight into his thoughts, hear about the way things were for him growing up, and to visualize pivotal points in his life that helped shape him into the man that I know and love. He certainly has enough stories to fill a book and I am beyond honored that I get to help him compile this book over the next few months. 

I remember writing a paper about my hero when I was in middle school, I wrote about Pa. He is truly an inspiration. Words cannot describe how awesome it is to be able to type up memorable events, people, incidences, and values that he has experienced throughout his life. The journal entries he has sent me thus far are really comprehensive. They cover childhood up until this current year. It is really amazing to learn about my great grandparents and have the opportunity to feel like I knew them.

It is my wish for every generation to connect with the ones before them on a deep level. I learn so much from my grandpa, have a better sense of how fortunate I am to have things we now take for granted, and have a better sense of purpose for my life because of our relationship. 

He has lived an amazing, distinguished, and incomparable life. I consider it a blessing to know him, a gift to be related to him, and an honor to work for him. 

Simply Live in that you connect with those around you, especially those that have a few more years experience in life than you.

Live Simply in that enjoy the little stories along the way that enrich your everyday life.

Much love,

Alyssa

The Men Who Built America Provides Outlook on Modern Society

"Every business is about understanding people. Which people you have to get through, which people you have to embrace, which people you have to jump over, which people you have to push out of the way. That's the game." - Donny Deutsch, Advertising Mogul. Season 1 Episode 1 of The Men Who Built America.

This is just one example of the extremely aggressive language used in the show "The Men Who Built America". My little brother is home-schooled and was watching this episode for a little history lesson. Quite frankly I found this show/story to be disheartening and embarrassing.

People like to look at Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie as if they are these miracle workers who made America the "greatest nation" that ever existed. We are a nation that cares not about the well-being of our own people or other nations because we are playing a game, and the way to win the game is to be number one monetarily. Who cares about human rights, happiness, income disparity when you can be rich? Money is the only value that this country was founded on at the turn of the century.

As someone who raised in church and has read the Bible I can tell you that the example Christ set was one of unselfishness, giving, and denouncing the rich/powerful. While this country claims to be "Christian" nation, the example I found from Christ's teachings does not seem to be the example this country was founded on or the values in which it holds.

I am all about having ambition and striving for success. But success is defined by so much more than your pocket book. It makes me so sad to see these great men who built this country scheme and find ways to be the richest men in the country no matter who they harm or what irreversible harm they cause to the environment (granted they did not know it would hurt the environment at the time, but could they really think what they were doing was good for Mother Earth?). Then what made the realities of this show even worse is there are business founders talking about these men (like that dreadful man from Shark Tank) all talking about the example they set and the game of business.

It makes me sad that I studied business, even though I see business as an opportunity to provide something for your fellow man. I couldn't understand why someone would go into business unless it was to increase someone's happiness and help make their lives more useful... but then I look around at all the advertisements and items in my house which were just put out there in order to make someone money. 90% of our stuff we do not need, it kind of makes life simpler, but overall it was just a waste of money that helped someone accumulate cash on top of the millions they already have.

Moving forward as a country, society, and humans I hope that we can focus on making individual lives better... I hope we buy more locally, focus on doing things that make us happy (not making money to buy happiness), find fulfillment in everyday and stop selling our souls to the corporations that buy off our government and destroy our earth for their fleeting large sum of money.

Money is just a concept of our mind anyways. If we focus more what the value of something is to us and less on the monetary value imposed by the market or society we can find what is truly important to us. The things we love most we cannot put a monetarily value on... Even on his worst day I would not sell my little brother because the value I have placed on him is much more than any material product on this planet... That is because people and relationships are what strengthen us and are of the highest value. Yet we want to focus on money and being better than our fellow man just to make more money and feel better about ourselves. I guess we are so scared of being failures and being inadequate that we have to measure ourselves by something everyone has to some degree, which is money.

Anyways! As you can tell I am quite passionate about this subject and I could go on and on about it all day. But instead I will leave with my two tidbits and your own thoughts about the matter.

Simply Live in that you see people as more than a dollar sign and competition.
Live Simply in that you don't feel like you have to keep up with the Jones's by buying unnecessary items that really don't improve your life that much.

Much love,
Alyssa