once i built a railroad

I did a post a couple of weeks ago called “…down by the river“.

It was about living out of a van….YouTube video of a guy who was down on his luck and living out of his van…pontificating about all the bad that had happened to him.

Like most of the ways I try to view the world, it was kind of a “tongue-in-cheek” blog post.

I was thinking about that post this morning, and I was hoping that I didn’t come off as kind of cavalier…sort of flippant about his situation.

Maybe I just want to know that the silver lining has some humor floating around with it. It’s easy from the vantage point of “things seem to be OK here” to find humor in some of the world’s situations.

The hard part is maintaining your sense of humor when things are really hitting the fan in your own life.

Here’s another video about van living…this one is from a completely different perspective.

It would be great to figure out why things roll so differently for the people in this world.

I’m not that insightful…I don’t have a clue why some people seem to rise and others fall….in spite of all the “success” books I’ve read.  It seems kind of random sometimes.

Some people are happy to save money building their own “sportsmobile”.

Others are bitter about what twists their life has taken them through.

Living out of a van is the farthest point they can fall to.  It’s their own prison.

Maybe the common denominator with some of the “fallen” ones is the bitterness?

Maybe they were bitter to begin with….and the bitterness just compounds the hardship when they start sliding?

There’s a book called “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Wattles that’s kind of interesting.  It’s not a big book….I think it’s about 70 or 80 pages…and has been around long enough that it’s in the public domain and free to read or download…but it’s worth checking out.

Most of the modern practitioners of the Law of Attraction mention it as being one of the main sources of that philosophy.

The main point of the philosophy is that our thoughts have a bearing on what happens to us.

I don’t know that I completely believe that our thoughts can be used to completely control our environment.  That seems kind of insulting to the people going through hardship.

But I do believe that our thoughts shape our perspective…and our perspective is the only real power we have in this life.

Our developed ability to seek a positive viewpoint is the only power we have.

Now, I don’t know what the guy in the original blog posts philosophy is.  Listening to him, I’d venture to say that he doesn’t have a really positive worldview.  I might make the point that he’s arrived at the point he was aimed at all along…like water seeking its own level or something.

But I don’t know him…I don’t know his situation…so it wouldn’t be fair to think or say any of that.

I want a good life.  I want a good life for my family.

That is what I expect.

That is my perception of my world.

 

 

 

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