Although we had a pretty laid back Christmas this year, mostly because of our family passing around a sickness that kept us in bed, we still managed to make and deliver over 20 neighbor goodie bags filled with candy popcorn, fudge, homemade caramels, and peppermint bark. (we didn’t do as much this year as we normally do because of the sickness- luckily I had most of it made pre-sickness)  But one thing occurred to me this morning, something was missing….. Neighborly Acts.
I realized out of the blue this morning that this was the first year in my entire life that we did not receive one gift, goodie plate, etc. from any of our neighbors.
Granted in the different places I’ve lived some areas were more generous and giving when it came to neighbor gifts than others, some places we’d have the counter full of goodie plates and cute holiday gifts from neighbors, and other places we’d get just 4 or 5.  But this was the first year we got nothing.

In my shock I’m trying to explain some reasons it may be…… we are fairly new to the area, we moved here in April.  But that’s long enough to get to know people in the area enough that we would take them goodies for Christmas so that doesn’t really seem like a valid excuse.  We live in a pretty rural area so perhaps people here only take neighbor gifts to those that live right by them and our house is too far out of the way…… I don’t know……  If that is the case, it’s a sad thought to think that society has become so wrapped up in itself and people’s lives have become one that they are always rushing around yet accomplishing only the illusions of things that wont last.  Yet we always seem to make time to hop onto facebook, twitter, or pinterest right?

Scott and I have talked about how our own family has become less social and involved in the community so it’s not like we are above the changes.  We’ve allowed ourselves to get sucked into the social media of the world rather than the face to face interactions we could be having.  What happened to neighborhood bbq’s, block parties, taking cookies to random people, secret acts of service, visiting someone out of the blue?

What is REALLY taking up all our time?  Just 100 years or so ago people didn’t have electricity in their homes, and maybe not even indoor plumbing.  There certainly wasn’t microwaves, internet, cell phones, and all the things we like to think make our lives easier and save us time.  Think about it, just the fact of taking a hot shower- which we can do now in 15-20 minutes, used to be quite the ordeal to heat up the water, bucket it to where it was supposed to be and then of course clean it up afterwards.  20 minutes to take a shower today could have taken a hour or more back then.  Yet in so many ways our ancestors of that time period accomplished so much more than we do.

Where do our priorities REALLY lie?  Whatever it is you spend your time doing is where your priorities are.  You can admit it or not, but if something is truly important to you you will MAKE time to do it.  I think that could be one of the main problems- things are important to us in “idea” but not “action”.

This will be one of my goal areas to improve on this next year.