Excess
The holiday season has arrived in these strange times, forcing us to re-examine the meaning and purpose in the face of a pandemic that forces you to look long and hard at our mortality.
The incredibly long line of cars snaked around and around at a food bank in Texas was not only heartbreaking, but it made me think about how our consumer culture, always pushing us to buy the newest, shiniest, and latest can co-exist with the desperate need represented by those endless line of cars.
Christmas, the holy day that is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, has unfortunately become the greatest display of the corrosiveness of our consumer culture. Black Friday provides us with an opportunity to see the damage of this cultural norm, revealed in some story about a stampede of people rushing into a big box store to get the best deals for the latest gadget or toy. Sometimes the stampede results in people literally getting run over by the desperate mob. The sad upside to this pandemic is the dearth of those stories about the stampeding crowds where adults behave worse than children in an amusement park.
Spending more hours in my house than is probably healthy has made me see things I would probably not have noticed if I weren’t in it all day long. Marie Kondo, the organizing guru, whose book I read for a good laugh, most amusing moment was in her asking me to find joy in socks, was not the inspiration in seeing the excess all around me. What I will say about Marie Kondo is how truly remarkable it is she was able to turn her obvious OCDness, a casebook definition if you were to look it up on the DSM, into a billion dollar business. Instead the cause of me seeing the excess of my own life was the result of those line of cars, as well as, hearing stories about families, who had never had to receive a handout, traumatized and demoralized by needing the help now. As if Marie Kondo had taken possession of my body, I have spent the last month on a cleaning spree as if spring had arrived early.
As a New Yorker living in a New York City apartment, space is the luxury that is never enough. In spite of this reality, it is amazing how much nonsense one can amass when you aren’t paying attention. As I’ve cleaned out drawers, cabinets, and the fridge in my kitchen first, which makes sense given how much time I seem to be spending in that room these days, what has become apparent beyond the space created by the purging is how little is needed for survival. I’m certain those families receiving that box of food has realized the same once they are back home and confronting the reality of what was provided instead of what it was they may have hoped or wanted. I’ve continued this mad spring cleaning moving beyond the kitchen to the other areas of the house, side stepping my teenage son’s room for obvious reasons, apparent to those with teenagers. I’ve researched sites to resell items that can be sold, researched sites that take donations, all the while stripping things down to what is needed versus what is wanted.
I found a quote from John Powell that has stayed with me as I hauled out old clothes, strange kitchen gadgets, and the odd things that can only be found at the bottom of your desk drawer, “To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people”. I can’t say that our apartment will ever look as spartan as I imagine Marie Kondo’s must look given her OCDness, but what I realized was that wasn’t really the point. Perhaps some may see all of my mad spree of cleaning as a way to assuage my guilt for the privilege of having enough to be at war with my own excess. I can’t say I don’t disagree with that assessment. What I can say is it is impossible not to be moved and moved to re-examine life’s priorities when there is so much need all around me. That line of cars, the empty storefronts I pass on every block of my neighborhood, and the millions of hardworking people now receiving unemployment have given me a moment to pause, to reflect, and perhaps to make a shift, no matter how tiny.
For my family this Christmas will look different for the obvious reasons, but also because of our family’s new understanding about what is truly important, which we now know does not come in a wrapped box tied with a pretty bow. As we debate whether we should get our usual 8 foot tree bought from the French Canadians around the corner or just settle for a sad Charlie Brown tree, what is clear to me is this year’s celebration will be devoid of the excess that usually defines the day.
