Living the Dream

I watched a special on ‘Affluenza’.  Af-flu-en-za, is described as n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life. It was all about the high social and environmental greed in materialism and consumption.

I believe that this began with the movement of cultures out into the world, into areas that were already settled by first peoples.  The Americas are an excellent example of this ‘affluenza’.  At first, the newcomers to America wanted to conquer and acquire the goods and people they found settled here.  There were some that came, such as the Puritans and Quakers, who fled their homelands with  the idea that excess acquisition was a sin and that sharing one’s acquisitions was a spiritual commandment.  It was when this new land became the frontier of convoluted acquisition of what were luxuries to the next waves of strangers that came.  It has spun out of any control and we end up where we are today:  a people living in a life of our own making; one overly obsessed with greed, sex and violence.

The only way to stop all this is to follow an old New England proverb that I see small evidences of even today:  “Use it up, wear it out, and make it do, or do without.” - WWII American wartime slogan.  A simpler life must be found  - but not pride in poverty, which I find common, as well ~Simply keeping it as simple as you can.

I am a typical feminine consumer:  I counted how many different kinds of hair products and make-up, and lotions I have collected.  It is embarrassing when I actually realize how I have hoarded this stuff - for that is what it is ‘stuff’ that I have allowed myself to buy in to.  I do not even want to go into other stuff that is collecting in the storage-slash-arts-and-crafts room.  I try to excuse myself because I do, eventually, use the products and I do altered art (make new out of old).  But I am a wicked paper consumer - those poor dear trees I proclaim to love.  But there are ways I have curbed my consumerism and daily use of things.

I can make three meals out of a small roast.  I can make a healthy, filling, meal out of one steak for the two of us.  I recycle as much as possible and yet I know there are yet ways to reuse things.  I started a compost, I use old clothes fro quilt pieces and rags and even rug-making.  There are things I never buy and have been creative in reuse.  I also barter and go to flea markets, garage sales, Good Will and Salvation Army and do a great deal of alternate shopping at Dollar Stores and vegetable stands.  But I do not look, nor act like, a Bag Lady.  You’d never guess.  There is no sense of sacrifice.  There is a sense of pride when my partner is shocked at how far I can make things go, how I can reuse things and the pride I feel when I know I have been good at curbing my desire to acquire as an alternate to being happy, healthy and peaceful.

It was difficult for me to resist the hurry-worry life I had lived before I really ‘got it’!  I have learned to enjoy my surroundings, to tune in to nature and to listen to and understand all things that are connected to me.  I can not say I am ever bored.  My psyche is more soothed as I simply live in the present moment as much as possible.  (Thank you, Eckhart Tolle and The New Earth)  I no longer equate ‘having fun’ with ‘having a life’.  I have become creative in finding things to do that cost little or no money.  I have learned to nap and no longer equate it with laziness.  (I had to have several long talks to my ego about this.)

I do not need a new vehicle until this vehicle gasps its last.  I have a trailer that takes me to wonderful seaside shores for a few days throughout the summer.  I travel ‘home’ by train and love the extra few days of difference in isolation and the sense of ‘no rush’.  I take absolutely no medications for heart, nor hormone, nor high blood pressure; nothing!  I am 61 years old and grateful to say such. I am not idealistic to the point that I think that will not change.  I do have neuropathy in my feet, a hip like my mother’s, and arthritis in my hands, but have found natural herbs that really make a difference.  I order my books online as seconds or used.  I am far from a non-consumer, but I have learned to not be so desperate that I fill my life with material things.  I am not suffering, nor looking desperate.  I am simply finding new ways to do things my old life thought was important….rather than collect and buy just for buying or because I was filling another need, I now use it or lose it.

Consider your collection of STUFF.  We have to, for the division between the rich and the poor is widening.  There will always be those that have and those that have-not.  I am sensing a desperation, and not always quiet, as people are having to give up their acquisitions or their acquisitions are running thin.  Society would have us think other than being frugal and filthy rich, and conspicuously affluent, is normal.  For instance, have you noticed when they show the mid-west floods, the California fires, the hurricanes, that they focus on owner’s second homes, cottages, and ‘the owner was not living there at the time’ places?  I often wonder what the people are doing and what they have lost, that had one home, few possessions and what that cost them.

I am trying to break free of my affluenza.  Can you consider ways to do so, as well?  I’ll  trade bags with you.

Affluenza was hosted by National Public Radio’s engaging Scott Simon. It was produced by John de Graaf and Vivia Boe, the team who produced the critically acclaimed PBS special on another American epidemic, Running Out of Time. Affluenza is a production of KCTS/Seattle and Oregon Public Broadcasting and was made possible by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“Now that my house has burned down, I can see the sky” - Hiroshima survivor

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