Catch up with the first part of our trip here.
The red light of doom finally disappears, after stops at gas stations and the side of the highway. 2 more hours pass, and 45 miles from home, it quits again. Hazards on the highway as we slow to find the exit. We sit and wait in the gas station parking lot. Liquids and caps and cooling and waiting. 45 miles from home. 1 am. Was this worth it?
Finally, it cools, and we arrive home, safe and sound, in one piece.
We pay the babysitter, and I know that this ‘cheap trip’, this option to sleep in the company hotel room and share his food per diem, has ended up costing much more. A sitter. Museum admissions. An extra meal. Gas. Snacks.
And of course, car parts.
Was this worth it? How do you put a price tag on memories?
When the kids are racing around, sharing in the joy of discovering new exhibits, laughing together, and holding history in their hands. Exploring together, helping each other find fossils, how much is this worth? Because what I’m really asking is, are the kids worth it? Is our family worth it? Moments of closeness, family bonding that strengthens those frequent times of bickering and wounding, those selfish moments that living with siblings bring. Surely the money we spent on this ‘nearly free’ trip could have been spent on ‘better’ things.
Was this worth it? Can family bonding be measured in dollars and cents? Is experiencing life outside of our normal world worth the extra money? By whose standards? Does society put a limit on what memories are worth? What about experiences? Do experiences, the benefits of something, have a cost/benefit analysis? Can the lifelong memories of a trip be plotted out on a graph?
I wonder all this sitting in the dark on the side of the highway in Indiana. But I wonder it too, sitting in the hotel lobby on the banks of the Ohio, watching the news with my son. We listen as the woman governor stands and talks about not letting people drive. The big, old, white man goes on and on about how he will stop people from getting the benefits, the experiences he has, because somewhere along the way, politicians have plotted the cost/benefit on a graph, they’ve written and applied their algorithms and have decided there is a cap to who can experience life.
There is a spending limit, and not everything is worth it. Not everyone is worth it.
“What’s an immigrant,” my son asks me.
I give him the definition you learn in 4th grade. When people and countries and lines on the globe that define citizenship are just abstract definitions, bereft of real meaning. When politics and realities and the shades of gray complexities don’t exist.
I just want him to love people. I want him to see people as people, not issues and policies. I don’t want to get into the specifics of what he’s really asking. I don’t want to ruin him on people. To make him oblivious to their stories, experiences. I want the joy of discovery, of exploration, and curiosity of place to be at the forefront of his life, of all our lives.
Whether it’s jewelry, vacations, coffee, or fences, our money and our values affect people. Cultivating interest in the people and places around us is essential to ensuring that we don’t turn people into policy.
When we find ourselves on the side of the road, in the dark, weighing the worth of family time, or on TV, oblivious to the pain we are advocating, maybe we need to rethink what we value and why.
Maybe we need to remember that people are worth it.
What do you think? Should there be a limit to how much we spend on our families, on our neighbors? How do we balance being financially responsible with loving people?
Caris, you make many good points in this article. I have noted how our society increasingly views things in economic terms. It seems that it we can’t justify it economically, then it must not be worth doing. Or we use the cost of something as an excuse for taking a particular course of action. I don’t think we can ignore the economic aspect, but I think that too often it becomes an excuse for doing the right thing. I especially find this to be the case in the actions of (unfortunately) my state’s governor. I just wrote my own post on her and the politicians of this state (
http://theunguyblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/ashamed.html)
I don’t know that we can make a hard and fast rule as to what is a reasonable expenditure, especially when it comes to our families. Each of us must make that decision based on the situation, our values and our interaction with God. But I think you are spot-on with your statement that we don’t turn people into policy. The more we can recognize them as people made equally in God’s image, the less able we will be to treat them as outsiders and an economic burden.
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I don’t think we can ignore the economic aspect,” My husband read this the other day and basically reminded me that obviously I’m the spender and he’s the saver, haha. I don’t think we can just do everything in the world regardless of cost, but I know growing up, we just didn’t do anything, because there wasn’t any money. I look back now and think, we couldn’t have squeezed out $100 once a year to go on one mini-vacation? And in the case of the gov’t…I think it’s more the complete lack of awareness or compassion for the people and what it does to their life. I almost titled this, I went to Louisville and came back a liberal, ha! But I got done watching the news and thought we really need a bigger imagination. There has to be a way to figure out solutions that are economically feasible while also affirming the personhood of the people we are dealing with. To dismiss something b/c it’s against the law or too expensive just seems to be a copout for me.