Pinched and Small
Most everything—even the bad, you can as Laura Ingalls Wilder said, find a bit of good.
One of my all time favorite movies is Blackbeard's ghost, with Peter Ustinov as Blackbeard himself, Dean Jones as a newly arriving track coach for Godolphin College, and Suzanne Pleshette 'the coach's wench'.
One thing about this movie, I must watch it at least once every year. On occasion I can sometimes cajole others to watch it more often, although I sometimes have to get intimidating if promising people the moon and part of my six million dollars doesn't do the trick.
This is how it takes off:
I laugh in all the same (and right) places. I love the scene where Blackbeard is harassing the policeman, who of course can't see him. Meanwhile poor Dean Jones, who can see both of them, is trying to do damage control to no avail.
And so it is that the new coach is at last arrested when the naughty pirate's last bottle of rum is found, empty of course, in the front seat of the car.
Dean is spending an uncomfortable night in the slammer. He's laying across the bunk, none too happy with his circumstances, when his unwelcome friend manifests himself on the top bunk and begins singing.
The raucous pirate has found another bottle of rum and is discoursing to the coach, who has a tendency to shout back at him in between mumbling quips.
It's during one of these tirades that Blackbeard who's perched on the bunk and he tries to take another swig from his bottle only to find he's 'run aground'. Of course in the jail cell the beds are small, cramped, and hard, and it's an all around bad situation.
"Aw," he says, "I've run aground. That's what's the matter with today's world. It's pinched and small."
I probably will be ruminating on this for the rest of this life. Comparing the difference between my Grandparents' lifetime and today; even my in-laws' lifestyle and today we are even more pinched and small.
Our choices are somewhere between 'slim and nun'. We are programmed to either have a JOB or be homeless. Slim to nun.
We like to play the game 'Cashflow' by Rich Dad/ Robert Kiyosaki. It shows how even someone with a regular income can beat the system.
I like to play that game. Unlike Monopoly you don't compete against others, you compete against yourself. All sorts of things can happen, but the one thing most all of us who have played it don't want? The boat!
I like listening to Dave Ramsey too. His philosophy isn't like Robert's, but I like combining the two philosophies.
I'm not a wild spender and I don't like debt. Even when I have my six million dollars, I see me changing my life style carefully, little by little. Robert Kiyosaki, encourages a person to gain wealth through entrepreneurial endeavors.
Dave Ramsey encourages paying off debt by living a draconian lifestyle (beans and rice, rice and beans). Once debt is paid down and savings is in hand, then you are much freer to live the way you choose.
It can be seen as a problem or a challenge, but what makes our lives pinched and small is ourselves. We first need to be honest. As with Jordan Peterson's rule eight: Tell the truth—at least do not lie.
The first person we lie to the most is ourselves. In the game of Cashflow there are things called 'doodads'. Most of those are expensive toys we could do with out, but we spend far too much money on, then we don't know where our money has gone.
We can have doodads in other areas as well. Or distractions that we pat our self on the back and make excuses for. That's how people waste time, money, and in the end they waste their lives.
We aren't better for it and neither is anyone else. Remember: "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
If we want more than pinched and small we will have to live worthy of more than pinched and small. We should not be sleepwalking toward a destination we are not choosing, nor did we choose.
Rule number one in Professor Peterson's book is: 'Stand up straight with your shoulders back'.
Rule number two is: 'Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.'
Both of those rules put self in the drivers' seat and does away with the victim crier. It says, 'get up, stand up, and step up'.
Luke 6:38 "give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again."
