Loyalty

I have recently figured out why I have had so much trouble making lasting long-term friendships.  It is really very simple.  It is also the reason why it has been often and long so difficult for me to find suitable employment.  The reason?  I am not a consumer.  This doesn't mean I don't spend money on services or that I never go shopping.  Far from it.  But I don't think of myself as consuming these things.  Shopping and buying are not a huge part of my life.  In fact they are way at the bottom of my hierarchy of values.  So, what does this have to do with friendship or employment?  Well, more than what often meets the eye, I would say.
     You see, Grasshopper, we live in a consumer society.  It's all about money, buying, consuming, greed, covetousness, selfishness and addiction.  Treating others as a means to an end. We are a collective gaping maw that can never be satisfied.  As individuals many of us are kind, generous and altruistic.  Collectively, we stink, and we don't only stink, we are a collective and intolerable stench in the nostrils of God, or for those atheists and agnostics among you of all that is good, pure and loving.
     The urge to buy terrifies you but it also influences, shapes and informs who you are.  From our earliest childhood we are bombarded and taken hostage by advertising on TV directed at kids and forget about our parents holding back the tide because they have long been rendered helpless and useless since they were programmed and brainwashed the same way when they were kids.  You broke your toy?  Mommy and Daddy must buy you a new, better and more expensive one.  You're laptop is obsolete?  Get this spiffy new i phone.  I phone obsolete?  How about this i-pad with all the new apps.  New apps obsolete?  Spend money, money and more money whether you have it or not.  Extend your line of credit.  Meantime surf the Internet for dating sites.  Want a friend?  Look at friendship sites.  Tired of your significant other?  Get a new one.  Your friend is boring.  Check this new site, you'll find a new one.  Sick of your spouse?  Trade her in.
     In a consumer society nothing is sacred.  It is all about buying and spending and investing.  This thinking creeps into the way we treat others and in the way we perceive ourselves.  We remain superannuated children who must always be entertained, distracted and protected from boredom.  What is the point of loyalty in relationships when the raison-d'etre of our relationships is all focussed on what we need, what we want, on our own selfish, self-centred self-fulfillment?
     I have never been able to live with this consumerist model.  Through my teenage years and way beyond I eschewed pop culture, consumer values (sic), and TV.  I had become from the age of fourteen immersed in Christianity, and not simply immersed in a belief system but into a most powerful spiritual dynamic focussed and founded on principles of unconditional love and compassion.  Even in the wake of my parents' divorce, and disintegrating and splitting churches I had been involved in I sought in others and sought to be for others a stable, loyal and long term presence.  But we all change with time and in time we lose interest because there is nothing left to maintain our attention on the other.  There is no real enduring love there.  There never was.
     We are not disposable.  Nobody is, but we treat one another as conveniences and through this post I want to challenge each and every one of us to rise above this and start seeing others in a new way, not for what they can do for us, but for the opportunity to love one another as Christ has loved us.  This means that we don't discard one another because we have outlived our usefulness.  It also means acquiring eternal values that have squat to do with self-gratification and consuming.  For those of us who hanker for community this is where it all begins.