Wallet Gone Crazy

Lots of things cross my brain every day, and not a small amount of these things revolve around, well, things. I suppose it's not a secret that us Fenway Rd. girls suffer from sporadic, albeit not disabling, depression brought on by a longing for more, well, things?

I have to say, I have discovered, and subscribe to, the notion that happiness is in the present moment. The minute you put it onto something, or ascribe meaning to an inanimate object in the manner of say, "if I could only have that Dohickety thing from Big Box #457, I would be SO HAPPY!!" or "if I had a thingamajig like Darlene, then we could be happy sharing our thingamajigs together" then you create this forever scorned scenario of chasing after this thing in order to aquire happiness. Of course, it's just ridiculous, and I spend another good portion of every day assuring my children that if they actually GET that Happy Meal, indeed, they will not necessarily BE happy. Whew! It's fairly confusing, isn't it? Imagine the undisciplined mind, what trouble it has!

I think we are, as a human race, in the midst of a shift. I think there are inklings in almost every single person's mind that all this plastic crap that's made in China is bad on just about every level. As a mother, I trip over, wash, assemble, disassemble, carry, drop, disinfect, discard, and ponder over no less than a thousand plastic things every single day. And that doesn't even count MY things.

Yesterday, my 5 year old had a birthday party. I loathe to think of myself tomorrow, trash day, lugging about 5 square feet of plastic and carboard packaging, twisties, filler, instructions, glassine "try me" windows etc. out to the curb, a full 75% of what came in to my house yesterday. The 25% that is left was made in a foreign country, by some factory worker that often probably doesn't see the light of day, either because of long work hours, or smog. The toy is then shipped on the high seas, in a container on a ship of containers filled with 100% plastic (75% which is discardable) burning fossil fuels all the way. Hundreds, if not thousands of people handle the product. Hundreds, if not thousands of gallons of fossil fuels are burnt to bring that Dohickey to my child's feet. And then 20 minutes after she's opened in in a fit of addictive aquisitional frenzy, she's dumped it under the couch, lost 5 of the 85 pieces and rendered it tangled, dirty, shodden and disheveled, a skeleton of it's perfect HDPE self. I think, good people, we are getting savvy to how bad this is...for everyone and everything.

I don't want to be the "In-my-day" type of person, but I must point out that when I was 5, my mother got me off the bus, handed me an apple, and pushed me out the back door. There were no cartoons on at 3 pm on a Tuesday. There wasn't a huge panoply of product to accompany every Disney movie. There was not an assault on my tender, youthful innocence that made me say things like "put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight" from every media outlet. I have become a Virtuoso of Value. I know what things are worth and I won't pay a penny more than it is. I buy raw ingredients. I shop at thrift stores. I wear shoes until they fall apart. I get books and videos from the library. I drive an older car that's paid off and smells like my dog, which is good, because I still have her and she still smells, and if I had a new car, I'd spend too much time being mad at the dog for who she is. Why would I want to do that? I love her. She brings me joy, even though she smells.

So, the veggie garden movement, the green movement, the wind power movement, the simplicity movement, the gratitude movement, the back-to-basics movement...whatever you call it, is upon us. I doubt we will ever reverse things to contract global warming, save all the glaciers, keep the seas down, avoid skin cancer and megastorms, but I think we can all embrace that the time is now to stop buying so much crap. Make the pledge. Ask yourself if it's really worth it. Can I live without it? Will my life be better if I have it? Will I be happier?

Try to be happy one moment at a time. Not one thing at a time.