I hope things go well for your family, and glad you enjoyed the post.

@Arjun – yeah that’s kind of a sad state of affairs. Hardship builds character and if you haven’t had any, what kind of character will you have? Some people just don’t learn that they can’t have everything exactly when they want it.

@Tess – Thanks for the birthday cheer, Tess! And no worries, your thoughts are perfectly fine to me

@Michael – Right on, Mike! The world owes you nothing. Therefore you must take what you want by reasonable force. Your kids will thank you in the long run.

@John B. – I love your comment! As I stated to Mike above, the world doesn’t owe us anything. We have to earn our keep through actions and not just through requests and wishes. If the world was perfect, we wouldn’t value it at all (I think).

I love your message. The things we appreciate the most are the ones that took the most work and sacrifice. So many people feel the world owes them a rock star lifestyle for 4 hour workweeks. People have had it too good for too long. We need a little more pain to appreciate how good our lives really are. We live in amazing times, but we shouldn’t be greedy.

You make some good points. I think we could learn from all pleasure and no pain but were not that spiritually evolved.

One needs to have values, character and maturity to do so. Just my thoughts without giving it a ton of thought.

We are trying to do the right thing by our son and give him a life where he wants for nothing… unfortunately by doing this he loses all value for money and earning and deserving!

For him it is a case of Mum can pay or get more $ from the ATM. About 3 months ago we put a stop to this… he now has a list of jobs to do and if they get done then some $ goes into his account. He can’t touch it. Any money he gets through b’days, Xmas and the like he can spend so he has to budget this carefully!

We are also reading “A Fortunate Life” to start to comprehend that there are people who have honestly had to suffer in their life and not always had it comfortable.

Only time will tell as to if this will work!

@Bunny – Awwww, thanks so much, Bunny It’s funny how compliments and good cheer on occasion make us feel happy, while buying something new usually just provides a momentary high.

@Jonathan – Um, thanks for being honest, Jonathan. I hope you learned your lesson.

@Steven – Thanks man, I appreciate the birthday cheer

@Jess – Hey Jess, nice to meet you here. ha ha yeah maybe a thousand dollars once a week would be nice. And I hope you can liberate yourself from your crappy job soon. You should start a business or at least a small revolution of sorts (look up Jonathan Mead if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Hope to see you around the blog soon!

@Lisis – Ah, a mother’s love toward her son – you’ve reminded me of that . Well, maybe I could make something up… I should ask for a book. She’s in love with learning so that’ll make her happy.

Thanks for your kind words.

@Walter – Sorry, almost forgot you! Man, you’re comments are pure gold. This embodies the main idea (aside from my birthday) of the entire post. Though I like all of your insights, I mostly like the last sentence. We treasure the realization of our true potential. So awesome and so true. Thanks Walter!

There’s beauty and satisfaction if we work on something we want to have. All of our senses will be involved in the challenge to acquire our laurel. And at the end, it’s not the prize that we treasure, but the realization of our true capabilities.