Simplicity: A Curse In Disguise ( water is life )

A few minutes ago I was thirsty and thought to myself: do I walk next door to the Poland Springs cooler and get a cup of water or, do i go buy a shaken iced tea from Starbucks downstairs from my office. A common debate I go through more than 4 times a day, after all we are supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day.

While sipping my shaken iced tea with cream i pulled out my phone card and called my mom.
She answers the phone in a low dragged out "hahlooow", she usually sounds like that when she is half asleep or if something is bothering her, but it was neither this time, she cheers right up knowing it was me :)

She hears me sucking the tea through the big wide straw and asks what i am drinking and I tell her tea. She then tells me how she is so tired because she just spent the last few hours filling
buckets with water before the city shut it off the water supply, they only turn it on for two hours a day, mostly 4am - 6am. For those who don't know my mother lives in Zimbabwe.

Okay let me get to the point.

When I am thirsty i am confronted by many choices
1. What do I want to drink?
2. Where do i get it from?
3. How much of it do I want?
4. Can i put whipped cream on it?
5. With or without ice?

I could go on with all the choices I have to make. Now I will switch the scenario to choices I was once confronted with when I would visit my mother as a child, a scenario some of my relatives still live in today. Bear with me I know this is getting long.

1. There is no tap to turn on, no running water, no Starbucks and no hallway water cooler.
2. There are no flavors to choose, no whipped cream options & no barista to serve you
3. The is no refrigerator to walk to, no ice tray and no convenient store with bottled water.

Thats is such a tough situation even to imagine.

My life today is simple, when I am thirsty I get up and go and get something to drink. I remember picking up empty 10 gallon tins that once had cooking oil, but were now water buckets and walking a few miles to the well with my mother. To me it was fun because I knew after a few days I would return to my father where we had water, bath tubs, refrigerators, soda pops and more, but to my mother this was survival. Once at the well we would wait in line make small talk with other villagers who were also filling up their water buckets. The first time I went to the well I was horrified I looked into the well to fill my small bucket and I saw "things"swimming in the water, tadpoles and other little "things". I squirmed and looked at my mother who laughed and told me "get out the way spoiled brat!". The trip back to her huts was not as fun carrying the full bucket.

So when I was thirsty I would take a cup and scoop water out of this bucket, always looking in the cup as I drank in case a tadpole swam into my mouth. I know the word "gross" is crossing some of your minds. When it was time to bath there was no shower or bath tub, I would take another trip to the well and heat the water on a fire. Then I would carry the bucket into a little roofless bamboo hut, lather my towel with soap, wash my whole body then rinse myself off scooping water from the bucket with my scooped hands. My favorite part was when I was done and there was still some warm water in the bucket, I would pick it up and pour it over my head, aaaaah!

Many of my friends and relatives live that life today, my mother wakes up every morning at 4am when the city turns the water on for two hours, to fill up her water buckets - gues that's better than when she used to walk to the well. Then she goes back to bed and wakes up with enough water to water her greens, bathe, and cook for the rest of the day. I on the other hand don't drink tap water, it tastes bad, the news says it has traces of drugs, it's not cold enough and so on and so on!!!

Life is so simple when I am hungry I eat, thirsty I drink, tired I sleep in a comfortable bed and yet I find myself stressed out over so many little things, when all I need I have.

We all have so much yet we all claim we have nothing, feel we have nothing. Being born in such a simple life where it's almost like we have a remote control to everything, we never have to think of not having anything. Simplicity is a curse I feel, it takes away from knowing what life really is, what we have and what it means. Simplicity disguises everything we are supposed to be grateful for.

Today I thank God for the tea I just drank, I am grateful that I had the option to have ice in it, to have cream, to have sugar. I remember waking up to milk my mom's cow for milk in our breakfast tea. Some days we would be late and the cow would have no milk because the calf would of go to it before us, so tea would be black and there wasn't a gas station or convenient store down the street.

Be thankful for water today, defy simplicity ( that disguises what we have) and rejoice in the blessings that flow through taps, stores and bottles everyday.

Bless
www.blessbybless.com