Happy ‘Buy Nothing Day’

Buy Nothing Day from AdBusters

No doubt completely lost in news of Christmas sales and Black Friday specials is the news that today is in fact “Buy Nothing Day.”   Little wonder if you have never heard of it, no major media outlet ever built a successful ad-revenue-based business model by encouraging people not to buy things.  But nonetheless, the idea that happiness is not derived from consumption and consumerism is an idea whose time hopefully has finally come to the general population. 

Amongst all of the bad economic news we frequently hear, the US has been in an unprecedented period of economic growth for about the last 25 years (since 1982).  Yet bigger houses, more cars, and bunches of more “stuff” have done very little to change or improve our daily lives.   A McMansion is just a house, a big, expensive TV is just a TV, an iPod is just a record/cassette player and a gas-guzzling SUV is just a car.  So perhaps it is finally time to abandon the naïve notions pimped by manufacturers, advertisers, and the associated culture of consumerism.

Sure, it may be as ineffective as the “Great American Smokeout,” but “Buy Nothing Day” is certainly a step in the right direction.  And the first step to a cure is always to first acknowledge that you have a problem to begin with. 

Go ahead and spend a day cleaning your house and not buying more stuff.   Spend some time with friends and loved ones and reflect how maintaining those relationships will return far greater value than buying yet another sweater or purse.  Afraid that if you don’t buy that gift sweater that it may in fact hurt those relationships?  That is a valid concern, but there are plenty of alternate gift ideas that can be very personal and meaningful that don’t involve much spending.  These include such things as a family tree, a framed photo, an address book (with friends/family contact info already filled in), a self-assembled food basket, and many other things limited only by your creativity.

So, Happy Buy Nothing Day – now wasn’t that much more satisfying (not to mention warmer and safer) than camping in front of Best Buy all night – and your basement and/or garage may just be cleaner for it.

The Whatifs and Other Monsters Under the Bed

The other night while I was lying awake worrying about something that I can no longer even remember, I came to notice my daughter lying on the floor beside the bed (a frightening shadowy apparition in itself until you learn to expect such behavior).  Eventually she presumably found the uncarpeted floor less hospitable than her own bed and returned there.

The next day I asked her why she was there and I got the standard kid answer for such nighttime behaviors: because of “Monsters under the Bed.”

I then wondered what I in the heck I was doing up at that time myself and realized it was pretty much the same thing: going to some cold, hard, dark place and worrying about my own “Monsters under the Bed.”  Those both irrational and rational fears we have when the din of the outside world quiets and we are left alone with our own unique thoughts and concerns.

This is a time and mood captured perfectly by the Shel Silverstein poem Whatif:

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song…

…Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

Shel and I just need to keep telling ourselves: those nighttime Whatifs and Monsters under the Bed aren’t real, they’re just illusions of our overactive imaginations and worst fears.  Even our most rational fears only very seldom come to pass and as wittily told in Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen):

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday

So go back to your own bed.  Turn on a flashlight or shine some hope and optimism into your worried mind and let those Whatifs and Monsters under the Bed fade away and melt back into the shadows.  4PM on some idle Tuesday will no doubt come soon enough, so for now appreciate and be grateful for the day you just had and look forward to and be hopeful for those yet to come.

Good Things Can Happen…

The movie Office Space certainly is a biting and hilarious indictment of the soullessness, absurdity, and mind-numbing nature of modern office life. 

One of the movie’s best and lifelike characters is Tom Smykowski.  Smykowski is a middle-age, middle manager (“I take the specifications from the customers and bring them down to the software engineers! I’m a people person! What the hell’s wrong with you!“) who is edging closer to retirement, lives in constant fear of losing his job, and as a result is perpetually stressed.

Smykowski, generally a negative person, is ecstatically happy only after having just been in a horrible, crippling car accident – because it means he doesn’t have to go back to his office job.  Bandaged and incapacitated, he tells his coworkers that “if you hang in long enough, good things can happen in this life!”

Vincent Van Gogh on Prozac

I see that Sinead O’Connor, of all people, is making the daytime talk show rounds endorsing the benefits and wonders of antidepressants.  Late night talk show hosts and comedy writers may need to go on antidepressants as well since they may have lost one of their favorite targets.    I don’t expect we’ll see Sinead desecrating any religious icons on TV anymore or going off on any other ultra-political rants.  And now we’ll also need to add Sinead to the list of people not to seat next to Tom Cruise at dinner parties.

And I really don’t mean to at all make light of what can be a very serious and often tragic condition.  In fact, I have little doubt that, while perhaps sometimes over-prescribed, antidepressants can provide real benefits to those who really need them. 

I just wonder what the overall effect will be on society as a whole.  Historically, those afflicted with bi-polar disorder and depression have been some of our more creative and productive citizens.  So in the age of meds and happy pills, can the world ever hope to produce another tortured, irascible, and iconoclastic artist?

To illustrate, here is how Van Gogh’s famous “missing ear” self-portrait produced a year before his suicide might have looked had he been under med-friendly psychiatric care today:

The End of Summer Blues and Promises not Kept

I, probably not at all unlike most people at this time of year – most of all students, feel the End-of-Summer Blues coming on.  As I find myself approaching middle age, these post summer pangs are probably a bit worse than when I was merely a student with little else to worry me than another year of bully-induced aggression and education-induced drudgery.  For now, I view the end of summer as yet another milestone from which to measure failure, goals I did not meet, and promises not kept.

So let’s see how I did:

Goal: I’m going to go camping with the family
Result: The camper never made it out of storage and now sits unused under a black walnut tree covered in blackened walnut effluvium

Goal: This Summer I’m going to read more
Result: I read 2 chapters in the book I started on New Years (the last time I had a resolution to read more)

Goal: Take the family to parks more
Result: I took the kids on 3 occasions (we’ll call that partially met)

Goal: Take the family swimming
Result: Again, partially met – we went swimming together as a family 3 times

Goal: Take the boy to an amusement park and ride some really big roller coasters
Result: By some last minute maneuvering, I achieved one! With 2 months of constant prodding – and an almost immaculate confluence of weather, schedules, and finances – I was able to take him to an amusement park and he really enjoyed.

And even though I usually hate the crowds and commercialism, I really enjoyed it too. From the grizzled, middle-aged (and maybe hackneyed) perspective of someone who realizes this: when I am gone special memories like this may perhaps stand out and allow my son to remember me more fondly (than as the distracted workaholic he might otherwise envision) and to set a better example for his kids.

I know this is the true “theme” that these theme parks pimp and have programmed into hapless parents like myself, yet it is probably one of the few advertising gimmicks that has some ring of truth to it.  Spend a day with your kids, don’t think about anything else, and share a memory that might live on a little beyond yourself.

When your daily work, missed goals, and failures are forgotten, this is the one thing that remains and lives on: the fond memories of your friends and loved ones - perhaps at least one reason to feel less blue. 

(Linguistic) Love Greek-Style

As any good protestant parishioner (or at least one who has had to endure the oft overwrought ”God’s Agape Love” sermon*) can tell you – in the Greek language, there are several different words for love - Eros, Philia, Agape, and Storgē - each expressing its own different facet and expression of love.

So while I was bashing on marriage a few weeks ago in this post and lamenting that the “Eros” version too often only happens when one returns after an extended absence, I thought it might be useful to examine all types of marital love.  And just as the ancient and modern Greeks have 3 or 4 different words for love, expectedly there are also these types and manifestations of love in marriage: 

Eros – Erotic/Romatic/Euphoric Love (Timespan – 1 night to 1 year) – I think we all know what kind of love this is – it is what they show you on TV and in the movies (even the non-pornographic ones!).  It is the chemically addictive desire to mate that our selfish DNA has endowed us with.  This is like when you begin to really like a song and learn its words and you just want to hear it again and again – thinking it will be that fresh and interesting always.

Philia – Philial/the Love of Friendship (1 to 3 years) - This is the most broad and ambiguous of the greek loves.  It can mean anything from the love of friendship, goodness, or even pleasure.  It can even mean being “lovable.”  And this is my favorite definition, for at this stage we are still at least trying to be lovable.  We know ourselves and we know our mates for all our strengths and weaknesses.  This is like when you have learned that favorite song by heart, but you still like it (you just may not want to hear it all the time or necessarily over again and again).

Agape – Unconditional and Long Term (3 to 10 years) - This is the start of the love of family, of the love of the more permanent love artifacts (art, children, connectedness, etc.), and of the love of something more than yourself.  This is like when you continually rediscover that song you liked long ago.

Storgē - Love of Family (10 years to ?) - This is the willingness to sacrifice the Eros, Philia, and Agape for the familiarity, safety, security, and commitment of a long term relationship with your family.  It is when you finally understand-through hard experience-the vows of “sickness and health, richer or poorer,” and so on.  It is the final sweet and pleasant mix of erotic, philial, and agape love with family.  And, with luck, it is the end state of all happy and functional relationships.  So “play it again Sam.”

Notes:
* I personally believe that modern Christians may be imbuing this word (Agape) with meanings it never originally had to have some sermon-writing material.
** I lived in Greece for a few years and would hear these words all of the time, and their meaning and connotation seemed almost nothing like when our preacher would use them (but in his defense, he may have been using the ancient meanings).  Some examples:
“Philemo! My Friend! You want to buy a rug!”
“Agapemo! (My Love!)” – was a favorite when I used to hear the Greek Ya-Ya’s use it to call their grandkids in for supper (and they probably weren’t talking about God-like love, although it is possible).

Marriage and Matters of the Heart

I leave home from time to time and I’m always surprised by the intense renewed appreciation both for and from my spouse upon my return home. 

Eventually this appreciation turns to familiarity and then turns to something that borders on contempt and then things finally return to their pre-trip levels of normalcy.  So imagine a typical return home as a romantic sine wave with its peaks, its valleys, and then its leveling off.

But this time, rather than just go along for the rollercoaster ride, I wanted to keenly observe this phenomena, track its progression, and study its lifecycle.  And along the way I came up with a few questions:

• Is it at all possible to reshape this standard relationship curve by changing the set of inputs?
• Just exactly how do we transform ourselves from interested, considerate, and near euphoric mates into a bunch of belching, farting, and complaining troglodytes?
• Exactly how do we ever get to the point where we treat our spouses with less consideration and respect than we show any other human?

And the answers gleaned thus far…

• For the record, regardless of actions, its does not seem possible to change this cycle - (euphoric and erotic) love fades – spouses grow up  – they get real jobs with real responsibilities – they have kids whose lives have their own special sets of demands – and that is life. 
• We go from being on our best behavior and trying very hard to impress at the beginning of a relationship to our worst behavior and frankly not trying very hard (if trying at all) as the relationship progresses. 
• We seem to be hardest on our spouses because we expect more of them than of any other human being (including ourselves).  Where could these expectations possibly come from?  Most likely the messages transmitted from all forms of media – movies, books, magazines, internet, etc. all portraying some idiolized fantasy realm populated by perfect mates (a Stepford Spouse who is 1/3 Saint, 1/3 Genius, and 1/3 Porn Star).  We need to realize, regardless of media portrayal to the contrary, that our spouses are ordinary humans like ourselves and set our expectations accordingly.   

This all sounds like pretty terrible stuff doesn’t it?  But it is not, these examples are but the most negative and most extreme.  Along with these negatives, you get many positives:  comfort, commitment,  and all of those other tenets laid out in the marriage vows.  Of course, you don’t get these things for free – you definitely have to be willing to work for them – and especially try to minimize the many negatives mentioned here.

And it apparently doesn’t hurt to go away and give your spouse a break every so often either.  So here’s to looking forward to the next trip – and appreciative homecoming.

Now, where was I?

Sharks’ Teeth and the Sands of Time

The highlight of any middle-aged, inland, family-man like myself’s year is the annual trip to the beach.  This year was particularly momentous in that the family was able to visit 3 coastal areas in one pass: the Chesapeake, the Outer Banks, and Topsail Island.

While at Topsail Island, my wife got down low in the sand and started noticing many sharks’ teeth.  For the next 20 minutes the entire family was on the hunt for sharks teeth and found 20-30 in as many minutes by simply getting down low ourselves and looking for them.

This struck me on several levels:

1. How many small, obvious things like this do we miss in our own lives every day?
2. What if we had a similar reminder of our own fleeting mortality – such as human teeth washing ashore by the millions - would we take a larger view of our own affairs? 

I then got up from my crouched position and looked at all of the newly built beach houses around me.  Now, I was on Topsail Island 6 months after Hurrican Fran (11/96) in the spring of 1997 and the place was a disaster area – completely covered in sand and not a beach house to be seen except where particularly industrious owners had uncovered a few partial remnants. 

Perhaps these new beach dwellers could look atre the fossils in my hand and be just a little mindful of the relentless onslaught of the sea and the sands of time – for at least 10 years anyway. 

Beliefs, Flaming Lips, and Happiness

I live in a backwater which is so remote that we do not even have access to National Public Radio (NPR) radio broadcasts.  Fortunately, NPR does a pretty good job of providing internet access to and streaming their programs, especially for a pseudo-government entity.   

NPR is often criticized, perhaps sometimes fairly, for having a liberal bent, but they actually have some excellent, thought-provoking programs.  And as Stephen Colbert often remarks “”thoughts/facts/reality have a well-known liberal bias”. 

One of my favorite segments is “This I Believe” a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition, it is actually an idea revived from a 1950s radio program.  The essays are weekly submittals from intellectuals to celebrities to Average Joes and everyone in-between.  It has even spawned a website where anyone can submit an entry. 

As one might expect, the contributions are often just a reflection or accumulation of the contributors’ collective experiences.  A few ones I have liked:  

• Pro God: William F. Buckley – pro God (I think, but who knows what he is talking about with words like “congeries” & “animadversion”)
• Anti God: Penn Jillette  
• Pro Pizza Delivery Dude: “Be Cool to the Pizza Delivery Dude” 

But I think this week’s installment was one of my favorites.  It was presented by Wayne Coyne, singer for the band The Flaming Lips (which I have never heard of but I take it is an odd combination of an Indy Rock band, Frank Zappa, and the Blue Man Group). 

Wayne’s summation of belief is to “try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living.”   He even anticipated the thought I often have when I read the entries of successful celebrities who have achieved their life goals when he assures the reader that “I felt this way even when I was working at Long John Silver’s. I worked there for 11 years as a fry cook.”

I like that:  “Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living.”   

Not a very good advertising campaign perhaps – but excellent advice.  Now I’m off to do just that.