Wealth

It's that time of year again. I watched the enormous truck back into the driveway. My son watched in fascination as a man with a thick, greying beard connected the pipe. Within minutes, our oil tank downstairs displayed its little floater at the top of the gauge, and I was writing out a check. We fill our oil tank twice a year, once around November and once around March. Of course, living in the northern hemisphere in a cold-winter area, we use significantly more oil in the winter months. But that's hardly my point today.

I always get a thrill from filling the oil tank. It's the same thrill I get after a good grocery shopping session, in which there have been a lot of good sales and I have filled my cart. It's the thrill I get when the church giveaway room has several outfits out for the taking, all the right sizes for my children. I simply love having Plenty.

This isn't just an odd quirk of mine, mind you. It's a pretty common human condition. In Western Society, we have the curious desire for sparser homes and thinner women. Throughout history, the cultures have trended in the exact opposite direction, probably because wealth was not nearly as common as it is in the present day. Consider the example of the needy taking pictures of soup kitchens on their cell phones. We hardly understand what poverty really is anymore. I can't claim to truly understand it either. Even when we haven't known if we could fill that oil tank again, we've still had a weathertight house and the expectation that nobody is likely to destroy it in war or for spite anytime soon.

I like to focus on and enjoy the simplest and truest types of wealth. Recently, my family and I sang for a Salvation Army coffeehouse. One of the workers there found out that I have a baby girl and offered me some free diapers. I hesitated, automatically saying what I usually say in similar situations. We'd love the help, and I'll definitely use anything we're given, but I'm sure there are others in more need than us and they should probably be aided first. My mother told me on the drive home that we are in fact 'salt of the earth humble' and probably not much less in need than the other families in that area.

This surprised me, to be sure. In my reckoning, we're doing pretty well. Sure, you can look at us as a family who can't yet afford to replace the carpet as it wears thin, we're basically one major car repair away from disaster, and it would be nice to have enough money in the bank to replace a major appliance should it suddenly die. However, I tend to look at the plenty. I look at the pantry piled high with consumables, the lovely big yard, the clothing so plentiful that we can afford to toss pilly t-shirts and holed socks...

...and the filled oil tank, ready to give us heat and hot water all winter long.

Last year, it was only the sudden dip in oil prices that allowed us to fill that tank at all. We're in better shape this year, thanks to the mortgage refinancing done before Obama's plans made the process nearly impossible for anyone who hasn't missed a payment. My baby's hospital bills are all paid off, and we're starting to put money back into savings.

Still, I'm never going to take a filled oil tank for granted again.