How many toys did you have as a kid? When I travel, especially to Third World countries, I love to go for walks and watch people. I like to see how people interact and how children play.
In warm countries, where most of life is lived outdoors, I get plenty of opportunities to see family life up close: husbands and wives arguing; elderly folks sitting and watching the action around them; children playing in the streets. I enjoy observing the young children best of all.
It's a rare sight to see, even in the slums, children playing together who are not happy. I've observed six little boys living in a garbage dump outside of Manila chasing a bicycle rim down a dirt road while giggling unashamedly.
I've seen four pre-schoolers playing with a tiny field mouse in a small beach-front town in India.
I watched a couple of 12-year-olds in Kinshasa, Congo as they used an old stick to dig rivulets for a small stream of sewer water. They were fascinated as the filthy water took turns toward the destination they chose.
I've asked several parents in these countries, "Do your kids ever complain about boredom?"
Without exception in peoples who live outside of Canada and the U.S.A., the answer is "No!" They're usually surprised by my question, as if to ask, "Why would a child ever be bored?"
But then I think back to my own upbringing in the 1950s or my parents' in the '20s or '30s. Did we ever complain about being bored? I can't remember such a time.
I've asked parents my age, "How many toys did you have while growing up?" The answers range from zero to 10. Like kids in poor countries today, most older people respond with something like, "Toys? We just would take a cardboard box and make something out of it." Or they played, Hide and Seek, Simon Says or Go, Go, Go, Stop!
I've read that the typical pre-school aged North American child today has accumulated 250 toys. At five years old, a child has lived for 260 weeks - thus, that's about a toy a week. And many are still bored.
Every trip to McDonald's, they cry for another toy! What happened?
Where does contentment actually come from? Does it come from having more toys? In adults or children, if we have one more toy, will we be happier? Will I be content if I go to another movie? Or if I eat out one more time? Maybe if I buy one more shirt? Or if I add another week to my vacation?
No. Contentment comes from within. It's an internal disposition. We all know it but we don't live as if we know it. We keep trying to scratch an itch of discontentment but we're scratching in the wrong place.
Barry Buzza (barrybuzza.blogspot.com) is senior pastor at Northside church in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam.
