you and i (pt. 1)

Ingrid Michaelson is amazing. I say this ALL the time, I know. But I will share her awesomeness with you using one of her "recent" songs (I say "recent" because she's probably had it forever): "You and I." It's a very catchy song, very upbeat and silly, but I like it. I think it contains some Christmas season wisdom, so yeah.

Pt. 1

"Oh, let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France."

What Our Parents Should Mean To Us This Christmas

You know when you're really young (if you haven't had a bad childhood), you say that you want to earn lots of money in the future and buy your parents lots of great things, like clothes, food, new cars, houses, etc. I don't know, maybe that's just me. But I know that doing something nice for our parents when we have jobs is one of the images we have of adulthood.

God did say, "Honor your mother and father," and yeah, maybe buying things for our parents isn't exactly straight-up honoring them, but it sure beats sticking them in nursing homes and never visiting. Not that there's anything wrong with nursing homes - sometimes it's just tough to really take care of them. But for sure, as a dutiful son or daughter, you kind of want to provide them with something, just for putting up with you all those years. 

But I think as we grow up, we tend to lose this mentality. We get too busy for our parents. Our parents cause us way too much stress - they want to know how we're doing in school, they want to know who our friends are, where we are on Friday nights, when we're going to find a respectable significant other, why we aren't exercising and losing weight - and sometimes, we just want to get away so we don't have to listen to them nag. Yeah, I totally get that. But when we do come home for breaks like these, it's important that you're patient with them. That you answer all their questions, respond to their comments, and just keep a smile on. They're honestly not going to be around forever, even with all our health advancements. 

When we get too busy for our parents, we start using up the money we earn only on ourselves. We want to save up our money so one day we can spend it on our mansion, on our Lexus, on our designer clothes, on our gourmet food. And our parents? A nice little fruit basket on Christmas. Y-no. 

So you can't buy them a house right now; you're not even considered rich yet. It's okay though. What Ingrid and I are telling you is be rich in love, patience, and understanding and make the house a little more relaxing this holiday season. I know whenever I come back, my house is a war zone, with my parents trying to mold my brother into an upright citizen, my dad always busy with work and my mother trying to take care of every aspect of the house. But it's almost Christmas, and the house should be a little bit more at rest, so I'm going to try to help out more and keep people at peace. Because as a poor college student, what else can I do? 

That house in France will simply have to wait.