As a recently hired maintenance engineer at the nursing home for mentally ill adults, for me, it has been illuminating to realize that the residents, three to a room, about 12 feet wide and 25 feet deep, live in this tiny world, with their few possession.
Then I extrapolate and wonder how the average, bourgeois adult, in his 2, 000 square foot, three bed room home, considers himself that much better off than these nursing home residents. Granted he has wealth, freedom, private ownership and near complete control of his personal affairs, but the degree of difference seems relative.
If God is worth 100 zillions dollars, and has an IQ in the many trillions, and owns are at least directs a near limitless universe, how actually big or special is the bourgeois existence of a maintenance engineer?
Perhaps, I am looking at this all wrong. Maybe, how much more or less one has is not the issue, but how one lives a life of liberty, creativity, happiness, individuality, loving and being love, while following God, based solely upon what one is and what one has at this moment in time.
Regarding the residents that I help to care for, it should be noted, in fairness to the owners, that these vulnerable adults are not on the street. They have a home, and are well-fed. They get regular medical care and many cultured activities to participate in, if they so choose. Many suffer a dual-whammy of mental illness and drug or alcohol addiction.
Still, it is an eye opener to see how small their living quarters are.
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