Let me tell you a story. It’s a
familiar story. Maybe you know it. A man
and a woman fall in love. They realize
they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. They begin to talk about a possible future
together and what that could look like. So the man begins to make a plan. Searching on Google, he finds “7 Tips for
Planning the Perfect Proposal,” and he’s off. He enlists her best friend as his
co-conspirator and he scouts out the perfect location to pop the question. He
hires a professional photographer who will lurk just out of sight and be ready to
capture the big moment. Everything will be shared on their social media
accounts – Facebook, Instagram – with tons of “likes” and “Congratulations!”
Once they are engaged, the couple
begins planning their wedding. They know
that the planning phase will take about two years, because they have friends
who have gone through this. So they begin
with the first step: visit the potential
wedding venues so they can compare them on size, attractiveness, availability,
price, and other variables. Once they
make this decision, they can set a date and proceed through the following
steps, which include finding a wedding photographer and videographer, caterer, baker,
band, florist, dressmaker, and so on.
The big day arrives, or should I say “days”
– because along with the wedding itself there are the pre-wedding parties
(bachelor party, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner; then there’s the wedding
and the reception; and the post-reception brunch. Then a honeymoon trip, after which the
husband and wife settle in to begin their life together.
They want to buy a home, but the truth
is they are financially tapped out from the wedding event and all the
accompanying events. This would be a
problem, except that there are mortgages available for first-time homebuyers
who don’t have the standard down payment.
If they play their cards right, they can start the home buying process
with only a few thousand dollars – and that much they are hoping they can get
from a cash advance on their credit cards.
Now they are homeowners … sort
of. I mean, they don’t actually own
anything; the fact of the matter is the banks own them. But they have their dream house, and they
tweet about it to all their friends, post a picture of the happy couple
standing in front of the “Sold” sign on all the social media sites, so it’s
official. And now they can start their
family.
One happy morning she takes the home
pregnancy test and it’s positive! She
doesn’t tweet this, though they do share it with a few family members and close
friends. She’s pregnant. We all know what this means: let the
baby-shopping season begin! Because, of
course, babies need so many things:
diapers, diaper bags, diaper genie, onesies, snugglies, blankies, spit
cloths, bottles, pacifiers, rattles, Baby Einstein toys so baby’s genius
potential can be realized, cribs, pack & plays, swings, bouncy seats, high
chairs, portable high chairs, strollers, baby monitors, sound machines … I think
there are many more things that I don’t even know about, but whatever they are,
they are things that babies need, things that mothers and fathers need, things
that will be an important part of their happy home.
Finally the baby arrives – and the
event is recorded. And shared. Now they are three.
They want the best they can possibly
offer their beloved child – the best toys to stimulate this developing mind,
the best and safest car to travel to baby gym class. The best neighborhood…the best
schools…they’ve been thinking. This
house of theirs may not be suitable anymore.
The schools are not great – they’re ok, but not great – and the parks
are a little sketchy, and besides that it’s starting to feel kind of small,
what with all this baby gear that takes up so much space. They have been thinking…and they think it’s
time to start looking for a bigger and better home. The problem is they don’t really have any
equity yet. But they think that they can
sell the house and break even; then if they use what they’ve saved up in a
retirement account they can get the house they need.
Are we getting tired of this story
yet? I know I certainly am.
This modern American lifestyle is just
the latest incarnation of the problem that’s plagued humankind since the
beginning, since humans discovered stuff.
This adorable couple is just the latest version of the rich fool who had
to build bigger barns to store his grain.
So it would have a nice place to sit and rot.
We shouldn’t judge this man too harshly. The farmer Jesus tells us about in the
parable is not a bad man. Clearly, he
has worked hard and been a good steward of the land. It has produced well for him and that is good
from any perspective. That is something
with which he can be satisfied – even proud.
But what happens next is not.
He sees that he has an abundance of
food. He has a lot of food. He has too much food…more than he can
consume. But all of a sudden, his
perception changes and this abundance is not too much at all. It is just what he needs! He absolutely must have all this food, so the
problem becomes how to manage it. His
storehouses are full and there is still much more food waiting to be
stored. He’s on the verge of panic. The only possibly solution is to build more
storage. Only then can he feel secure
and be at peace.
Maybe you already know this, but peace
won’t come from full storage barns.
Security will not be the reward for hoarding food. True contentment does not arise from having
enough of the right stuff.
Maybe you know what really
happens. As soon as you have acquired as
much stuff as you thought you needed, you realize there is something else; you
realize that there is more stuff out there that you don’t have. Until now, you had no idea you needed that stuff;
but now that you know about it, you can’t rest until you have that stuff
too. You need it.
Or so we think. This is a story about some of the less
attractive qualities of being human: envy, greed, anxiety. “Tell my brother to share our father’s inheritance
with me, Jesus. It’s not fair. Jesus, help me; I should have as much as he
has.” And the anxiety is an inevitable
byproduct of living in the material world.
From the moment we discover there are things we don’t have that we must
acquire, to the moment we acquire it and have to figure out how to manage it,
to the moment we discover that there is yet something else we don’t have, and
so on.
Our lives are spent chasing after
things to acquire– and experiences to check off our bucket lists – but we are
so occupied with the chase that we barely enjoy the experience. We are barely present to experience them. We are
too busy orchestrating photo ops to organize in scrapbooks or upload to social
media sites.
We buy products that have built in
obsolescence, so we’ve no sooner gotten used to it that we have to replace it
with a new and better product which we will try to figure out how to use. We order, we buy, we service, we fiddle with
our stuff. We marvel at these amazing
new things. We nearly go cross-eyed
trying to read the instructions and we give up and hand it over to our
grandkids in the hope that they can intuitively work it out. This is normal in the modern American life.
The young
couple in my story are on the upward side of the trajectory, of achieving the
American dream. Many of us are on the other side, but we are not immune to the
lure of acquisition. We still watch TV and see the ads for everything we must
have which we didn’t know until this moment. We still use shopping as a form of
therapy and entertainment. And now we have grown kids who come to our house and
tell us, “it’s time to replace that ugly fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, no
one has those things anymore, for heaven’s sake, get some pendant lights.”
But now we
watch our retirement accounts fearfully. When the stock market goes up, we
breathe relief. When it goes down, we toss and turn at night wondering if we
will be okay, if we will have enough.
+++
The story of the young couple isn’t
over. They get their bigger house in the
better neighborhood and empty their little retirement account in the process. Over the next few years there are two more
children, more stuff, and all the camps and lessons and activities that you
would expect. They keep thinking they’ll
get ahead next year; that they’ll get their situation under control; get a
little breathing room soon. But every
year is the same as the one before – only worse.
One morning they wake up. They realize they can’t live this way anymore
because they aren’t really living. They have
to find another way, and the only way will be to rid themselves of some of
their possessions. They sell the house
and buy something much smaller and simpler.
They sell one of their four cars (well, it’s a start). They give some of their furniture and books
and other things to the church rummage sale, to the homeless shelter, to the
Goodwill – knowing that they will not replace these things with newer versions,
like they normally would do. They learn
how to unsubscribe from email lists that scream at them to buy more stuff. They learn to cook and eat at home. And they discover some of the simple joys in
life they had always been too busy for.
They are learning how to disengage
from the consumer treadmill, where the fundamental creed is the more you have,
the happier you are, because they’ve finally realized it’s a lie. They are learning that if they value their
lives by the quality and quantity of the stuff they have, they will never
really believe their lives have value at all.
They are learning the secret of having
plenty and of being in need, as the apostle Paul wrote. They are learning to be content.
They are learning to be content. Which is a journey itself.
Photo by Ruchindra Gunasekara on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment