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RE: Things I Have Learned To Live Without ...and why sometimes it's better
I really enjoyed reading your post. Ever since I was young I have always marveled at the luxuries of what those in what some perceive as third world countries have, a strong sense of community, deep faith, and value in a day of true hard work....among many other things. Luxury in this day and age amounts to frivolous unnecessary falsities.
It's great reading of the things you have laid aside and your reflection of how your life has been bettered for it.
I think that lack of sense of community is a big one in the west, and the cause of many ills. Of course, the corporatocracy likes it that way: people shop to try and fill the void, and the poor don't unite and rise up and demand justice. I've read that it's a very different thing to be poor in a wealthy nation vs. being poor in a poor nation. Like, at least in a poor nation you're not alone or feeling alone in your poverty, and in a wealthy nation you see all the wealth and think, "What's wrong with ME?" Of course you're not alone in a wealthy nation, either, especially the States, but it sure can feel that way! And homeless people are constantly having their scant few possessions destroyed by police and told to "move along" when there is nowhere for them to go and rest, whereas in poor countries there are slums where at least you could make your makeshift shelter and not have the police destroy it all (unless they are planning for the olympics or something, as we've seen). Even the UN inspector commented on how cruel the US was to homeless people. But I'm going off on a tangent, lol.
Yeah, there are so many things I could say about all of that. I could use up all of my bandwidth just going off on the bullshit we are force fed in this country by the corporate dictatorship. But all in all I really do think that more often than not we are richer beings when we have less material burdens. Unfortunately our programming in this the US makes it hard to figure out what that really looks like.