Friday, December 30, 2016

A good cup of coffee


I am a woman with mostly simple wishes.  I am not big on having the fanciest thing, the gadget with the most bells and whistles, the newest and greatest of pretty much anything. But simple things are harder to find these days.

I love rolling the windows up and down in a car and not pressing a button.  Until my present car I could still find cars like that.  I"ll admit that it helps that I also drive small low budget  vehicles and drive standard to boot.  But those little buttons have motors. Motors that will need attention and replacement.  That never happened with my little crank windows.

About 15 years ago my wife and I got a small 5 cup coffee maker.  On Christmas Eve Rob accidently broke the carafe.  I discovered I could not find a replacement carafe and we began to look on line for a replacement.  Although I typed in 5 cup coffee maker I got all these fancy things through the feed first. Keurigs, french presses, latte thingies.  And 12 cup programmable coffee makers. It was like someone was saying "5 cups?  You think you only need 5 cups?  Wait!  Look at this!!"  Finally after scrolling, for $11.99 we found a small 5 cup replacement coffee maker.  It looks like the picture above.  It works perfectly and meets our needs.

But it made me think about how each day we are subliminally bombarded this way all.the.time.  Menu items are "super sized."  Phones have to be so fancy that you need a doctorate to use one.  Televisions are "smart."  For the record my "dumb" TV works fine and I am totally happy with it.  But I think a large segment of society try to buy their happiness. I would hypothesize that this leads to a state of chronic dissatisfaction because there will always be something bigger and better out there.

I see this in my kids.  I am often saying to them that there will always be someone who has more than you and someone who has less than you. The secret is to be happy with what you have, and to give what you can to help someone else.  Off my soap box now and off to enjoy a good cup of coffee!

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