All You Need is Love...Most Days

A lot of what I say on this blog is about how fulfilling our life is, regardless of money.  I carry around this message that "all you need is love" and "money doesn't equal happiness". 

But some days I don't buy it.  Sure, no amount of materialism is going to bring happiness into my life.  Most of the time I am perfectly happy living the simple life and there's few possessions I truly want.  For the day to day life all I need to keep a smile on my face is the love of my family and friends, the smiles on my children's faces, a long conversation with a loved one, and good food in my belly.

The, last night we experienced a harsh example of when love just ain't enough.  If money wasn't an object then we could have told the veterinarians, "Sure, do an MRI.  Go for the surgery.  Just fix our dog as fast as you can." 

See, yesterday a very important member of our family got seriously hurt.  Our beloved, goof of a dog, Brady, injured his back, his spinal cord, in some way.  And right now all we can do is hope that it's the one not-so-bad option.  All we can do is hope that will a lot of pain management and rest over the next two days it will heal itself.  Because if it doesn't, we don't have any other options.  If it doesn't get better in the next few days, there's nothing we can do.  Brady would need surgery and we just can't afford it.

And right now is when I get angry about living on a budget and how unfair it is that some people don't even have to think.  They could just fix their pet. 

So, yes, money can't buy you happiness most days, but today it could.  We're here in this tiny, dumpy apartment, with hubby in grad school, because we have to acknowledge that to some extent money does add to happiness.  Living paycheck to paycheck, barely getting ahead each year was not a lifestyle we were willing to live forever.  We fully acknowledge the importance of saving for retirement, for our children's college, for a farm, maybe for travel some day. 

I'm in no way abandoning my belief that for day to day life, all you need is love.  I am simply acknowledging that money plays a part in happiness also.  And I'm desperately hoping that our sweet, protective, trash eating, wandering, loves to sleep on the couch, pooch comes home to us soon.  He makes this family complete.