So, where and when did the tables get turned upside down? Perhaps you can remember those informative and impressionable times of your early life when you were routinely told, “do this…don’t do that.”  If your home growing up was anything like mine I’m certain that your parents were pretty intentional to carry forward the generational mantel to make sure you or your siblings knew the “what to do’s and what not to do’s” of life.  All of this seemed to be an intentional effort designed to help us build a life of disciplined moral thought so that we could easily discern right from wrong (and stay out of trouble).  This instruction served to establish the underpinnings that we would need to stay the course of living a life of informed obedience.  After all wasn’t the end game to help forge in us the building blocks to become young men and women of consistent character and integrity? As I think back on this I can clearly see the countless hours devoted to this effort on my behalf by my parents.  I know too as a dad I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to instill this into the life of my son and daughter as well.  But I’ve been thinking (and observing) recently about another set of “do’s and don’ts.”  One’s that once allowed to germinate and take root eat away at the very core of our intended being.  Here’s the question. Why is it that so many of us that do have so much spend so much of our life’s energy focused on what we don’t have while so many of those that don’t have spend so much of their life’s energy simply being grateful for what they do have? Once again we can see how what was intended for us as good has been turned upside down by our own nature such that it now works against what we know to be right and good thinking.  How can we get things back to being right side up?  Could it be a matter of getting back to the basics?  To seek character over comparison, to trade places with looking for what we can get out of life to what we can give to the life of others, to pursue the freedom of enjoying versus the bondage of coveting and lastly, to become outwardly faced as opposed to inwardly focused.  You know it’s been said that thanksgiving is the best antidote for the angst and anxiety caused by wanting what you don’t have.  Perhaps we too just simply need to be grateful for what we do have. Peace.