Consumed

I was just in the local Shopper's Drugmart buying milk and I noticed a rack smothered with gift cards.  Then I began to notice all the various candies and crackers and treats and goodies beguilingly displayed to snare a few impulse buyers and I thought, how behind the times I am when it comes to shopping.  I had never even noticed the gift cards by various checkout tills until someone recently pointed them out to me and it was only because I was asked by my supervisor to buy such a card to take one of our clients shopping.

I very rarely spend unnecessarily and it is probably so long since I last bought anything on impulse that I can't even remember.  I sometimes wonder just what is it that has spared me from the demon frenzy dance of Shop-Till-You-Drop.  I think there could be any number of good reasons.  For one thing I have never been a materialistic person.  But I think this has to do with some other active factors in my life.  I am a very strong Christian and I have long sought to align my values with those of the Gospels and the New Testament.  This includes eschewing wealth, riches and greed and using the money we have to share with those who are without and to also live modestly, knowing that our reward is in living in the reality of God's love and truth.  I have also been strongly influenced by alternative and countercultural values from the late Sixties and Seventies.  I read and cultivated friendships and liaisons from a very early age, fourteen, with persons and resources that taught me the importance of living with integrity and a sense of community responsibility.  At seventeen I was already an environmentalist, decades before it became fashionable.   In my early twenties I made up my mind to shield myself as much as possible from the false gods of consumerism and materialism and I have faithfully lived this way ever since.

I am also an artist.  Creative people tend not to be consumers.  People who shop a lot, unnecessarily, who binge shop, who rack up piles of debt are really not much different from or better than junkies and alcoholics.  They are spiritually and ethically empty and shopping and accruing unnecessary stuff helps satisfy that itch, if but for a few seconds and then they are hitting Amazon, eBay and the mall all over again.  It is axiomatic that we live in a culture of debt.

I can't really offer any solutions.  Perhaps I might learn to acquire a little more compassion for people I find too easy and too enjoyable to judge.  I do feel sad for all these sad, soulless drones who cram the sidewalks fixed on their little rectangles of plastic and metal, shopping, consuming, and isolating themselves from real contact with others.  As for myself, I simply look for whatever way I can reach out to others in a way that is possible, positive and non-threatening.  I also silently pray for those around me.  And for myself, given that I am not always in the mood for prayer.