I Wonder.....

This morning I woke up wondering about all the experts we seem to be bombarded with these days. People telling us how to eat, sleep, love, feel, pray, worship God, raise our children, decorate our homes inside and out. What things to keep and what not to keep. How to spend our time, how to spend our money, how to do laundry, how to organize our kitchens, how to shop, how not to shop, and on and on. The Internet, the television with the myriad of stations available, along with glossy magazines and books tell us how to live. If we buy into all those methods of expert advice pretty soon we are little more than robots doing the things we are told and completely forgetting how to live on our own. Makes you wonder how in the world this country could have been settled without all the experts we have today telling them what to do.

I woke up this morning, not with buyers remorse but with a tinge of that "WHOA" feeling, like life was moving too fast in regard to change. I love my new living room look and the excitement that goes along with having new things, but at the same time I felt this loss sort of feeling for the way things were. I am 99% certain I would not have made the changes if there was no decorating shows on television, no decorating magazines, no experts telling me about the dangers of not changing as you get older, no stores that make you say things like, "oh I wish I had that". The modern Gurus of our time preach about contentment etc but speak from homes that show there was lots of shopping going on to get them that way. You watch cooking shows on television or buy some cooking magazine and suddenly you feel like you can't possibly make good bread like your grandmother made unless you have some fancy gadget ! Hummm, lets think that one through. Your grandmother had a bowl, a spoon, strong hands and an oven she knew well despite its temperamental ways.

I woke up with resolve to keep my little front room, old fashioned and filled with stuff I love. I don't care if it won't ever make the cover of a magazine or make those designers cringe if they ever saw it. I am going to keep the wood stove burning in the more contemporary living room no matter if it "doesn't fit" the decor. I am going to have a contemporary room and an early American room, and a colonial dining room, and a functional kitchen right along with a couple rooms that frankly don't meet any criteria for one style. I am going to admit that we needed a new sofa, the other one was not very old but it was poorly made and when you sat in it, the pillow back, sort of devoured you. These pillows had minds of their own, never staying like they should. They formed their own shape, despite your shape. There was not one thing comfortable about it and we tried replacing the stuffing of the pillows with everything you can imagine, except straw ! We bought our new furniture on sale, about 50 % off. But then I decided that we couldn't use the old area rug any more and we needed a new lamp and the kerosene lamp on the wall needed to go....you see I had been watching the experts on the home decorating channel and looking on line for beautiful rooms. I changed some art work too.

Compared to what the experts say to spend, we are way way way under budget but....do we honestly need so many experts in our lives to tell us how to live our lives ?

The little front room is going to stay my haven for old time things. Lit by lamp light, cradle by the window, old cedar chest surrounded by baskets of wool and the pewter coffee set sitting on top. My rocker in the corner with the spinning wheel next to it. The quilting frame against the long wall. This room doesn't "match" the living room which I am sure is some major decorating faux pas. But it works for me and after all I live here. In this world with so many experts we might just have the risk of loosing the ability to think for ourselves. We might be raising up a generation that thinks you have to do it only the way the experts say or no way at all. With all this talk of being your best self etc, we are still listening to others tell us what that is for us and they don't even know us ! Maybe, just maybe people would not have felt the need to over-spend so much if we didn't listen to the experts tell us how big a house we needed or how we had to have it decorated with top of the line counter tops and stoves like we see on television, the Internet and in magazines.

Lets not fall prey to all the experts, but lets rediscover what the independent thinker can do.

Maybe its time to be our own trail-blazers once again in life. I am feeling rebellious and plan on combining styles despite what the experts say : )

Time to get off this computer and gather some wood to heat this house.