Читать книгу Born-Again Marriage - Dr. Bonnie Psy.D. Libhart - Страница 10

There was a knock at the door. We climbed out of bed, weaved our way through the boxes, and got to the front door. As we opened the door, there were our friends, Joyce and Doug Partin, with their beautiful Winnebago parked at the curb.

"We've brought breakfast to you for the first morning in your new home." Big smiles were on their faces as they stood there with a tray of bacon, eggs, juice, and coffee. They had brought their microwave oven in their luxury motor home and had prepared a complete meal. They even supplied the napkins and silverware.

We cleared away a place on our dining table and had breakfast the first morning in our new home. I thought, “How beautiful it is to have friends like these!”

I glanced out the window at the Winnebago and thought of all the fine things in our world. Joyce was talking, and the conversation led to one of our friends who had recently come back from a trip to Europe.

"Did you see her diamonds? They must have weighed ten carats! And some of the clothes she brought back from Spain are gorgeous."

Some of our other friends had gone and brought back paintings, antiques, and gold boxes. "They say the little gold jewel boxes can be easily stored or hidden," Joyce continued. "The markets for them have been absolutely terrific this year. It's a good investment, better than certificates of deposit or savings accounts."

I thought of all the things we have here in America and of how we, as well as people all over the world, are collecting and looking for happiness in these "things." We continued to talk about our mutual acquaintances.

"She has all these collections of valuable goods…yet, she seems so unhappy." I had time to think about that statement a little while and recalled when we were first married how we could hardly wait to have our first house. We thought when we saved up enough money for the down payment on that first house and moved into…then we would be happy. As soon as we got the house, we wanted new furniture. As soon as we got the furniture…then we would be happy, we thought. Then as soon as we got the house filled with furniture in the living room, bedrooms, and dining room, we thought, "If ONLY the house had wall-to-wall carpeting...THEN we would be happy. We could have our friends over and everything would be so nice." So we carpeted the house. Then we thought how nice it would look to have all new drapes too, so we bought drapes.

Shortly thereafter, we moved to Arkansas!

In Arkansas we really didn't want to get an old home we would have to worry about, like the one in Pennsylvania. Tony said, "Let's build a new home and THEN we'll have everything in it just like we want it."

So Tony, who had designed many homes, churches, and apartment buildings, sat down with the builder to finalize details. The major hindrance was the builder could not build the house fast enough for us because we continued to change our minds. By the time it was completed, we had completely changed it from our original idea, and we still weren't satisfied.

After we had lived in that house for a few years, the next step was to buy a bigger house. We decided this time we were not going to worry about building a house and having to add on. We would take a couple of years to "shop" for the house we wanted so we'd know it was our dream house -- it would have the lawn in and everything would be finished. We found the perfect home! It was a two-story French Tudor home. This was our dream home.

Instead of planning the rooms ourselves, we had a decorator come in and help us arrange the furniture and decide on the new pieces we would need. (After all, if you're on TV, surely you can afford to have an interior designer do your house ... Right?)

Since the latest craze was collecting antiques (and Tony's mother had an antique shop in Pennsylvania), we were able to get some nice antique pieces. Then along came the nostalgia fad, and we started collecting again. We thought we would really be happy if we had enough "things."

Also, we had decided one car was really not enough, so we purchased another car. As the children turned driving age, we planned to buy cars for them, too. We thought, to be happy, one should have the very best car money could buy. For us it was a Byzantine gold Mercedes-Benz.

Then we noticed some of our friends had fur coats. I took Tony to a showing by a St. Louis furrier, and we couldn't resist a full-length white mink. But the list of "things" didn't end with furniture, fine cars, and furs. We "had to have" the latest hunting equipment, rifles, and shotguns. Archery articles, cameras, and clothing. We were working to get all of these possessions--saving and hoarding them. We were so busy acquiring possessions there was no time for collecting love and making memories!

Tony and I had a rude awakening one evening when we got a call from the son of one of our friends who was at the courthouse. He wanted us to go there. Jamie was eighteen years old. He stood nervously with his lawyer before the judge. With a stern, almost condemning voice, the judge said, "Jamie, you are a disgrace to your entire family. Your mother is on television. Your dad is a civic leader--general manager of the Cerebral Palsy Telethon and a highly respected businessman. I have served on committees with him; I know him. Why didn't you become like him?"

The massive bench rose high above Jamie's head. Looking upward toward the judge, he replied, "Sir ...Sir!" He hesitated as fear tightened his throat. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, but ...you see, you've got privileges. I don't mean that you are privileged because you're sitting there and I'm here, but you are special because you know my dad. For you see, sir, I've never really known him."

Tears began to stream down Jamie's face as he spoke. A large lump grew in his throat.

"You see, sir, my dad has always been too busy ...too busy! When I was younger I often went to him. I'd say, 'Dad would you play ball with me?' Would you help me find my bicycle?' Would you be one of our Cub Scout leaders or coach our soccer team?'

" 'Not now son,' he'd say. 'I'm busy. I've got to look at some real estate. Maybe later.' "

Jamie was silent for a little while. There was a long silence in the courtroom. The big man behind the massive bench gazed intently toward Jamie's lawyer as if searching for something to say. Jamie's eyes were wet, swollen, and red as he began again.

"Sir, later never came. He was so busy making money to pay the bills for our boat and the other things we bought, I never got to know him. I've never known what my father was really like. Perhaps if later had ever come, I wouldn't be such a poor example of a son."

Jamie began to weep and sob deeply. The judge dropped his head in an effort to hide his own tears. There was a long silence. Jamie's lawyer slowly turned to the judge and spoke.

"Sir, Jamie means in no way to condemn. I am certain his father did not intentionally reverse his priorities. He probably thought he was doing right." The judge slowly raised his head. "Son," he said, "I'm not going to send you to prison. I can't. It wouldn't be right. I feel I should be merciful. I will grant probation on one condition: that you and your dad spend at least four hours together each week for the next two years. Son, you need to know your father. He’s a fine man. He needs too impart some of himself to his son. This process takes time. This court order will give you both an opportunity to develop a relationship, for you see, son, your father needs you as much as you need him.”

Because of our love for our friend Jamie, and a similar experience in our own family, we were temporarily awakened to the importance of family priorities. Even so, we soon found ourselves dreaming again about more possessions.

For example, I looked back at some goals I had written down. They were written while I was taking a course where we were taught how to set dream goals. First, we learned to make out a dream list. Later in the course, many of us had learned how to set short range, long range; tangible and intangible goals, My own master dream list included some things I wanted -- $100,000 a year salary; a yacht to sleep six; a house on the lake; money for college for five; money for parents; a Mercedes Benz car paid for; a three carat diamond ring; diamond pin, earrings, and pendant; all the money I could spend; a trip around the world; tennis lessons and court; the ability to speak seven languages.

By keeping my goals in front of me, I was able to zero in on them daily, I had been able to achieve some of them. But it seemed after we did realize the goals, we were still not satisfied. After getting the new Mercedes, that really didn’t matter any more, a white mink coat – what did that matter?

It was never over. One day at a church fellowship I said to one of my friends, “Oh, you have on a new diamond necklace and earrings.”

“Oh yes, we are investing our money in diamonds now. It’s a hedge against inflation.” What did I do, but go and get a BIGGER diamond than she had! And actually, having the bigger one brought me no more happiness. My “things” weren’t bringing me any happiness. But I couldn’t stop.

I read about diamonds, art, and antiques and learned the “authorities” advised people “in these tumultuous” times to hold a significant percentage of wealth in the form of real, intrinsically valuable commodities. They presented as safe a haven as possible against the risk of inflation and offered protection against other risks as well. We would own art, antiques, land, and diamonds, and these possessions would surely be the answer to all our ills. We bought almost anything that came along which promised a profit. Some investments, like an interest in a rocket car designed to break the sound barrier on land at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and interest in land development near a highway that was never built, have never yielded a return on our investment. But we plodded on.

Was it possible we really needed to set goals AND priorities? When we talked with Jamie’s father, we asked if he had a priority list.

“NO,” he said, "I just assumed I was heading in the right direction. I didn't have a priority list. I am a goal achiever - sell this, buy that, accumulate and accumulate. I know sometimes my family would ask me to participate in a sports activity at school, or my wife would ask me to go to PTA, and I would say 'No, I really don't have time tonight.' I really had not stopped to think about all of the time I was using in accumulating possessions and how this was keeping me from the very people I was supposed to be accumulating them for."

Delphia Frazier Smith, an author whom I had interviewed several times on TV, wrote a book called Along Life's Way. She said, "Happiness is not what we should search for; instead search for joy. Joy comes from within, while happiness is external."

One of the most beautiful human beings whom I count as a friend is Helen Steiner Rice, though I've met her only through her writings. Perhaps she would agree with me when I express the emptiness of the search for possessions. Mrs. Rice was widowed after two years of marriage when her husband tragically took his life when the stock market crashed.

He had left her a note containing one of her latest books, Heart Gifts, a special collection of poems and a pen portrait of Mrs. Rice as a person.

Her husband was a very wealthy man who owned all the possessions life has to offer. However, he lost everything in the stock market failure. One morning she woke up to find him gone.

She did find the note he had left behind:

Darling,

The only thing I'm sorry about is that I never could give you all the things I meant to. I hope you believe that I really wanted to give them to you, and I could have given them to you before everything went.... You'll always go on. I only knew one world. I just can't go down and become a bum--I have to go out with the bands playing.”

Of course, after her husband's tragic death, she was able to go on. She writes that only in later years was she able to understand why she had to lose him so tragically. Ironically, she said the night before they were married she had told him this story of a young girl:

She stood at the edge of a field of waving corn--a beautiful field, where every stalk was tall and green and luxuriant and every ear was perfect. And the farther the girl could see into the field, the larger the ears became.

A genie told the girl, "If you walk through this field, I will reward you with a gift in proportion to the size of the ear you select. There is only one restriction.

You must start right where you are standing, and you may go through the field only once. You may not retrace your steps. The ear of corn you bring out will determine the reward you will receive on the other side of the field.”

The girl was supremely happy as she started into the field. Carelessly she trod on many of the stalks, thinking to herself: I won’t take any of these, for in the center of the field they are bigger. I want the biggest reward I can get.

The girl ran on and on, intent on finding the largest ear in the field. Suddenly she realized that the corn stalks were getting smaller and thinner, she looked for a good ear, but she could not bring herself to pick any of those in sight. She kept thinking, There’s got to be another big ear before the end. But there was not. She came out of the field empty-handed.

Was I like the girl in the cornfield, always looking for something bigger and better? The happiness myth had me intoxicated. It says that if I have it--the car; the home; the status paycheck; a store-window spouse; the high-ranking hubby--I am happy. Does it make an idol out of a living standard? I knew I was worshipping something. I knew my worship was skidding me downhill faster than a toboggan. It was so hard to get off so I tried to live it out, live it up, and make it work. I traded status symbols like I traded green stamps for prizes. I went along with the crowd no matter where the crowd was headed—if anywhere. I lived out the lies of a marriage no matter what, no matter why. Yet the one question I could never stop to ask myself was WHY? How could I have asked? There isn’t an answer--not for selling my soul to a living standard. Not for making a god out of a supercharged way of life.

Wealth addiction expressed itself through possessions. I wanted something before someone else got it or before it got more expensive or was gone altogether. I was clinging to something I was afraid would be taken away. This was my way of life. But I began to ask myself how much enjoyment these “things” were bringing. How much time did we spend protecting or insuring them against loss or worrying about someone stealing them?

My preoccupation with possessions had distracted me from the simple pleasures I used to enjoy. I came to this realization when I visited a dear friend who has been hospitalized with multiple sclerosis, and her husband shared with me his own new awareness and appreciation of the simple joys in life—like being able to brush his own teeth and to walk outside at night to look up at the stars. Was there any hope for me and Tony, I wondered? “Maybe we need more friends,” I concluded.

ANALYSIS-ACTION

Possessions weren’t the answer to our problems. They didn’t bring us closer to each other or in the true sense enrich our lives. Nor did they do much for any of our friends who chased things.

But the chart and the goal listing below can help you examine how ‘things” stack up in your own life.

These are my Possessions	Scale 1-10 Happiness	Hours To Earn	Long time benefit	Was it worth it? Yes/No
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

This is your present net worth analysis. Next comes setting goals for the future. Goals must be personal, realistic and attainable. They have to be short-range (cook his favorite meal) or long-range (save money for vacation), tangible (lose ten pounds) or intangible (become a friendlier person).

GOAL LISTING

Goals for my marriage, personal and business life or possessions were born from within myself. My dream was to achieve something—knowing that it would happen. (I told myself, “I can remember names.” Within weeks I could do it. When I say, “I can” I’m right. When I say, “I can’t” I’m right.)

I started by first making a dream list of all the possessions and assets I wanted. (I had to take off the judge’s robe. Remember, we’re dreaming.)

Examples:

1. Finish my high school or college education.

2. Earn $_____ per year.

3. Take the kids on outing twice a week.

Now list some dream goals of your own:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

I then listed them in the order of their importance to me, and examined how achieving each of these dreams would affect each area of my life:

(see chart below)

DREAM GOAL-

POSSESSIONS-

HEALTH-

FRIENDS-

EDUCATION-

FUN-

GOD-

OTHER-

Then I started working on number one, and signed and dated it.

After I had gone through all this goal setting and striving after achievement, I still was unhappy. “Maybe if I were one of the “in” people, “I thought, “Maybe that would bring me happiness!