When my mother died she left behind some 100 bars of hotel soap.

When we were travelling as kids and spent more than one night in a hotel, mom hid the soap we had used so the maid would leave another bar. The unused soap went home and was used to provide bars of soap for the kitchen and bathrooms. The things is, my dad made good money, and while they had to watch costs early on, by the time I was aware of this game it wasn’t necessary. But she kept on doing it, even bringing home soap from cruise ships.

I know why she did this. It’s the same reason we had to put our initial on the bottom of our Dixie cup and use it till it was falling apart. My mother grew up during the Great Depression. My grandfather was never out of work, but money was very tight until mom was in her teens. Frugal wasn’t just a word, it might be the difference between having just enough and not enough. Those early years of difficulty stayed with mom and affected her for all of her 70 years. Even when she was set for the rest of her life, she kept doing certain things because of a fear from her first decade of life.

It’s a silly example, but it shows us the power of what we experience as children. The messages we hear, and the messages we get from what goes on around us, can set us on a path we blindly follow the rest of our life. Something like collecting soap is harmless, but other things can be destructive to us and or others, including our marriage.

Are you doing things because of your past? Are you doing things that no longer make sense, or that are now harmful? 

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I stopped collecting hotel soaps a few years ago.

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