Dialogo: Cutting back?

If you even catch a bit of news here or there the sense is that people are often talking about "cutting back" due to the continued increase in gas prices. Some folks are going to just continue to live the lifestyle that they have become accustomed to and just hope things will change.

What caught my ear yesterday was a conversation with a father of a a fairly large family. As he drove their huge SUV around town dropping off all the kids to their various activities, he said that he just did not want to have his kids spend the whole summer playing in the backyard.

Now, I have to wonder...what would be so wrong with that? Why couldn't you spend a couple of months finding creative things to do, reading a couple of books, playing games with siblings...seems like the possibilities to be occupied would be pretty huge. I had that kind of flashback to when I was in elementary school and remembered these days of June when I could not wait to be able to be home, playing in the backyard and just having a school-free schedule. There were the occasional trips to the library to stock up on books to read for rainy days when our mother did not plan to put up with bored children. There was the off chance that you could convince your parents to let you go to a movie--though that was a long shot.

Many of you have shared your concerns about how difficult it is to be a young adult financially these days between the cost of school and low wage jobs to get you by in the interim. So my question as you head off into the first weekend of "summer" is to encourage you to find a low or no-cost way to play. We all need to play and maybe in the process we will reconnect to people we have forgotten about or have not had time to be with due to our busy hurrying from one thing to the next.

How will you consider "cutting back" from the busy daily living we all are caught up in participating in so that you can just truly ease your mind and spirit--and pocketbook--to rediscover who you are and where your important relationships are at this time in your life?

It is a big question, and the challenge is to consider a time when the distractions of hundreds of cable stations, internet accessibility, and instant messaging forced us to relate face to face with one another. What do you think?