“Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the
increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.” (Oliver Goldsmith)
I love social media. It's
teeming with a strong sense of greed, discontentment and insecurity,
making a visit to the gentle Facebook or Instagram encouraging trips
which I leave filled with a sense of peace and accomplishment. I love
the way social media quickly turns from an easy world of
friendship-building and activism to an abyss of vacations I did not
take, cameras I do not own, outfits I cannot afford and children not
as cute as mine. Actually, I just adore American consumerism. It's
realistic, attainable, and doesn't posses addictive qualities, which
make it easy to abandon. At any point in time I could leave my
electronic device knowing I didn't have any guilt, lust, greed or
discontentment in my heart and turn to changing the physical sphere I
live in for the better.
I love being a consumer.
Preoccupied: thinking about something a lot or too much.
I assume you have figured
out that my sarcasm is running rampant. And I would like to clarify
that although I have cleared my palette of most social media forms in
an attempt to cleanse my appetite for discontentment, I still use
some and am learning the art of moderation. This attack is for us
all, myself included.
Because we can all be the
girl I saw on Pinterest earlier this morning, and it grieved me to
know that this is simply how we talk now. Her comment wasn't obscene,
crude or offensive. The outfit she was repining wasn't disgusting and
it had quite a few likes, (and I believe I was one of them.) But it
caused me to pause.
“If I had this dress,
every day would be a good day.”
It's not just America. It's
not just youths. It's not just social media users with 25K followers.
We say “Oh I would never be them!” But we are. Every day. Just
differently. It's simply humanity, finding the next brightest diamond
and spending all our energy wanting it until we don't have enough
energy left to like the diamond we own. So we grab and we work and we
live above our means so that every day is a good day. Except the days
don't seem to get better. Out closets, minds, homes and hearts become
over-cluttered and the people we live with and work with and play
with lose importance.
That dress won't make her
happy, and she probably didn't even mean it in the way I am
interpreting. But the fact still stands that we are susceptible to
discontentment and we are lax in curbing it and deaf to hearing it in
our own voices. It's just a conversation starter: wishing the weather
was different, wishing the line was shorter, wishing the house was
cleaner. We wish away what we have, buy something new, and throw the
old away - and we repeat the cycle at faster speeds until nothing
ever suits us and nothing ever meets the requirements we have built.
We spin out on our hamster wheels, fed up and done in.
We have all met the person
who is unbearably disgruntled and enjoys complaining. But that person
is simply a result of not stopping the cycle. Of consuming too much
too fast and replacing it too suddenly until there isn't anything
left – not physically, emotionally or spiritually – to appease
their hunger for more.
Consumerism is a slippery
road, and our culture knows it. Christmas has turned into a mad
shopping festival that I've fallen prey to, our wardrobes are never
quite up to par with the latest trends, and there's always an excuse and an easy payment plan
to upgrade. We've come a long way from the war-mentality of “reduce,
reuse, recycle,” and although I'm not longing to live in the past
or praising it for its perfection, it makes me curious how their
outlooks were when they taped things together instead of throwing
them away. It seems that my life has become more full trash bags and
less creativity, a smaller bank account and a larger hole in my heart
to be happy instead of being content. The ugly head of desire and
greed creeps up in the stores and in relationships. When my work vacation is too long I find myself falling prey to the voices that
convince me that everything in my house is ugly and outdated simply
because I've had too much time staring at it.
Use, throw away, repeat.
But I don't want to do that anymore.
As this New Year begins I
wish you the eyes to appreciate what you have and the endurance to
enjoy it long past the time the world says you should. Hold on to the relationships that seem to have nothing left to give you, and instead give them more than they've given you. There are
beautiful things and beautiful people we have thrown to the wayside
due to our selfish hearts, and I hope that I begin to see them for
the glory that they are instead of desiring what I don't have.
Happy New Year and may we
learn to give more than consume and find contentment with what our
lives hold!
Grace,
Myra Elizabeth
