This is the first full day of my project. I would call this an experiment in Consumerism. The plan is that I don't spend any money for one month. There are a number of reasons I'm taking on this challenge so I think I'll start this blog by explaining these reasons:
1. To free myself. I was spending the day with my mom last week. We had just gotten back from a walk and we were having a snack out on the porch when she said she was overwhelmed and felt she would never get the house in order. She is a flight attendant and her days off are often taken up with housework. This is a common complaint from my mom. There she sat, hunched over with her hands under her chin, elbows on her thighs, tired eyes looking around at all she owned, despairing over these things. So many things. She asked me why I thought she could never get the house in order. This is why: When she is away on trips, she shops during her layover. She brings all of these things into the house. These things need homes within the house, so old things pile up and eventually make it out to the garage. The town has a garage sale twice a year. My parents participate at least once a year, usually in the fall. My father will never willingly throw anything away. He has a storage facility because his things are much bigger(and not as shiny) than all of my mom's little things. Things such as old airplane wings, old filing cabinets, a 17.5 foot aluminum Grumman Canoe etc. A funny observation: My dad rarely brings new things into the home, but will be even more unlikely to remove any "old" thing that's been around for 20 years or more. My mother on the other hand brings new things in constantly, and would throw away ALL the old stuff if it wasn't for her great love for my father. I can see these things physically pulling my mother down, weighing her down, restricting her movement in her own home. I feel it too, and I want the cycle to stop, or at least slow down considerably.
2. To be happy with nothing. Yesterday I was feeling pretty down. Work was going by slowly and I was reflecting on my life to pass the time. Lunch time came around and I found myself driving, searching for a place to eat. I decided on some fast food and ate it hurriedly in my car. It tasted really good. Then I wanted a coffee. I went into yet another drive-through and ordered. Both of these things made me feel better in the moment. I went back to work, about 9 dollars less in my pocket, 900 calories more in my body, and the guilt that comes with all of that. Coming down from my sugar high I admitted to myself that I had just gotten an illusion of happiness from the food I had consumed. I don't want to use food that way any more. I don't want to use clothes or jewelry or home goods that way either. I see it everyday. Our society runs on it. We are taught to go to work to make money to buy the things we want to be happy. We work more so we can buy more. All of these things take up our free time too. After all, things need attention. They must be cleaned,put away, repaired, steamed and ironed, put back, discarded. We don't have time to do the things we want so we find quick fixes to sooth us. We buy fast food lunches and vending machine snacks and new dresses and designer sunglasses. We attempt to buy happiness, however short lived.
3. To be self sufficient and dependent on the kindness of strangers all at once. Without money, I will really have to plan ahead to get what I need. I am going to use my resources, get creative, use the system to my advantage, and take control as a consumer. This reason is the most exciting to me because it is a real challenge. It will take some figuring out, some sacrificing, and some nice people to help me. After all, you can't barter with yourself.
An offering; things that help me:
ReplyDeleteThe Stoics
http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html
http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_2.html
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html
(Epictetus in podcast: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Philosophy/Philosophers/The-Enchiridion/23721)
*
The Buddhists
Japanese Zen: http://books.google.com/booksid=9jIX_ingYAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=yoshida+kenko&source=bl&ots=NdzN_VkWzi&sig=lqKabh0anvVDide0qEz1CdVHZ_0&hl=en&ei=TD7eS8y7JZKc8AS-1-myBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false
The Heart Sutra:
http://books.google.com/booksid=9jIX_ingYAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=yoshida+kenko&source=bl&ots=NdzN_VkWzi&sig=lqKabh0anvVDide0qEz1CdVHZ_0&hl=en&ei=TD7eS8y7JZKc8AS-1-myBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false
Confucius:
http://books.google.com/books?id=eWJ0otvgOpAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=confucius's+analects&source=bl&ots=YvtsRBQYH3&sig=DhHANQO6AEsRsJ2AiJO3gFxi7gE&hl=en&ei=60jeS7HtBZKO8gT1_7CgBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Some of my favorite flowers (florilegia):
ReplyDelete“‘A cheerful poverty’ [Epicurus] says, ‘is an honorable state.’ But if it is cheerful, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”
--Seneca (Letters LII)
“Tiresome it is in the first stages of abstinence. Later, as the organs of appetite decline in strength with exhaustion, the cravings die down; thereafter the stomach becomes fussy, unable to stand things it could never have enough of before. The desires themselves die away. And there is nothing harsh about having to do without things for which you have ceased to have any craving.”
-–Seneca (Letters LXXVIII)
“Provided that one’s thinking has not been adding anything to it, pain is a trivial sort of thing. If by contrast you start giving yourself encouragement, saying to yourself, ‘It’s nothing– or nothing much, anyway– let’s stick it out, it’ll be over presently,’ then in thinking it a trivial matter you will be ensuring that it actually is. Everything hangs on one’s thinking. We take our cues from people’s thinking even in the way we feel pain. A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.”
-–Seneca (Letters, LXXVIII)
"Enslaved by desire for name and profit, to live a life tortured by care, with never a moment's peace, is foolish indeed. Such as are rich in treasure are poor in virtue. By its means men purchase evil and invite disaster. When they are dead, though they have piled their gold up to the constellation of the Bear, they do but bring distress on others. It is a poor thing to take delight in gladdening the eyes of fools. Great carriages, sleek horses, ornaments of gold and jewels-- all these a man of understanding looks upon as folly. Throw your gold away among the mountains. Cast into the stream your jewels. Exceedingly foolish are men whom greed for profit leads astray."
--Yoshida Kenko (Essays in Idleness #38)
"The chief business of man is none other than these three. To live peacefully, without being hungry, without being cold, without being harmed by wind and rain-- this is happiness.
--Yoshida Kenko (Essays #123)
“And, really, anything that is done to excess is likely to provoke a correspondingly great change in the opposite direction– in seasons, in plants, in bodies, and, in particular, not least in regimes. . . . Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for the private man and city.”
--Socrates (Plato's Republic 561 c-d, 563e-564a)
“Gluttony makes a man gloomy and fearful, but fasting makes him joyful and courageous. And, as gluttony calls forth greater and greater gluttony, so fasting stimulates greater and greater endurance. When a man realizes the grace that comes through fasting, he desires to fast more and more. And the graces that come through fasting are countless…”
-–Saint Nikolai of Zicha
"The Master said: 'Aspiring to the Way, but ashamed of bad clothes and bad food: such a person knows nothing worth discussing.'”
--Confucius (Analects 4.9)
"The Master said: 'If there were an honorable way to get rich, I’d do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn’t an honorable way, so I just do what I like.'"
--Confucius (Analects 7.12)
"The Master said: 'Poor food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow—that is where joy resides. For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting clouds.'”
--Confucius (Analects 7.16)
The Master said: “We’re all the same by nature. It’s living that makes us so different.”
--Confucius (Analects 17.2)