Meet Cecilia.
She sat on a padded bench with her tiny babe pulled close in a stroller. Her back was turned to me, but I felt led to approach anyway.
I asked Cecilia one question. “If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?”
This was her response.
Cecilia used to live in El Salvador. She wasn’t worried about money at all when she lived there. She grew her own crops and was “just happy.” Cecilia noted that in El Salvador, “money is not a major theme.”
Here in the United States “you have to worry about money” for your car, gas, and food. “I worry a lot about money here,” she said.
Cecilia couldn’t have said it in any plainer English.
“I wasn’t worried about money until I got here.”
I asked Cecilia if she was glad she decided to move to the United States. “Not really,” she replied. She’s always worried about money and paying her bills on time.
Cecilia works in a greenhouse. I asked her how she likes it. “It’s okay,” she said.
If she didn’t have to worry about money at all, she’d open her own greenhouse.
So what can we learn from Cecilia?
The take-aways are simple and profound.
Money fuels most everything in the United States. It’s a blessing, but it can also be a tremendous burden.
Sure, “money makes the world go round.”
But we’ll never be fully ourselves until we rid ourselves of this more, more, more mentality.
The ultimate desire of our heart is NOT to be richer, but to overflow with love, joy and peace.
Is this really true? I believe so.
Perhaps this post is best ended with another rhetorical question…
If you could only pick one, which would you choose? All the world’s riches, or a deep sense of contentment and fulfillment?
*This post is a part of a month-long 31 Days series titled Dreams from the Street. If you’d like to read more from my series, click here and you’ll be brought to the series landing page where all 31 posts are listed and linked! You can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/AmyBPederson where I’ll tweet links to all 31 posts using hashtag #write31days, and I’d LOVE to connect on Facebook at facebook.com/AmyBPederson! I’m so glad you stopped by. Make yourself comfortable and take a peek around the place. You’re welcome back anytime.
Cecilia is so right! This is a very interesting series.
Thanks, Katie! Glad you stopped by.
I wonder if you had asked Cecilia if she could go back to El Salvador if she would go? I see a bit of the “grass is greener” in this conversation. It’s interesting that she didn’t say that she would go back if she didn’t have to worry about money.
Ok that made me stop and think, how true her statements are! I’m loving this series and it’s only day 2!
Raquel, I know what you mean. It actually took me a fair amount of time to write the “Nugget of Wisdom” part of this post because I had to mill it all around a while. Because most of us have lived here our whole lives, it’s hard for us to sometimes see the burden this money thing can be…sometimes a fresh perspective is what it takes to help us see the truth.