Inadequate

I'm struggling, just like I do every year at this time. I love to make Christmas gifts for my family and friends, but it always leaves me feeling very inadequate about what I'm giving. Like there aren't enough presents or they didn't cost enough money, or I didn't do my duty as a good American consumer and buy all the crap everyone thinks they want but don't need. It all leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. Then this morning a friend sent me a link to a little video about "stuff". The clip discussed how we got to this apex of consumerism and it's resulting destruction to our planet. This is what Eisenhower's Economic Advisor said at the beginning of our post-WWII economic boom. "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate." WHAT? Seek my spiritual satisfaction through consumption? NEVER.

Thanks for the wake up call. It's not about the buying, it's about the giving. I do not want to be a part of the 5% of the earth's population who consumes 30% of the earth's resources, just to have 99% of the stuff I buy or give end up in the landfill within six months. My homemade gifts are a piece of me crafted for the people I love. Let everyone else work themselves to death to have the money to buy the crap. I will seek my spiritual satisfaction somewhere else!

Check out Heifer International. Now here's a worthwhile cause on which to spend your hard-earned dollars.