A friend recently referred to current times as, “The age of consumerism.”
I wholeheartedly disagree.
How can we be in a time of consumerism when I’ve had a wonderful non-consumer-ey day?
I worked today, and came home to find that my friend, who is the art director at Oregon Home Magazine had mailed me the latest two issues. (I love this magazine, but am too short sighted to let myself renew this beloved subscription.)
I also found that my husband and sons had rented the movie Iron Man to watch this evening.
After having a cup of tea and firing up the ol’ rice cooker, I zipped over to the library. (We’re about to have big snowstorm and I wanted to grab a few DVD’s to calm our soon-to-be addled cabin fever selves.)
I’d read that our library system is experiencing a boom in usage, which I think is fabulous. Unfortunately, this also means more competition for the good DVD’s. I did find, Good Night and Good Luck as well as a DVD set of the original 1963 series of The Outer Limits.
And guess which DVD had finally come off the hold list for me?
Iron Man.
I was tempted to not check it out, but I’d waited for it since it was released on DVD. And library loans are for three whopping weeks!
I made a quick stop at the grocery store and battled the pre-winter storm crowd to buy a few apples. (Saturday is dessert night, and I was craving a warm apple crisp.)
I found a dime on the ground, and got ten cents off the bill for bringing my own bags.
I swung back home for the rented Iron Man, which I took back to the video store and swapped out for Will Smith’s Hancock.
I also found two pennies on the ground.
How on earth can this be the age of consumerism?
We are all full of delicious apple crisp, the men-folk are watching Will Smith’s rather foul mouthed Hancock. I’m sitting on my $125 vintage couch and sipping tea from my favorite Goodwill mug. My thermostat is set at 62 degrees, which doesn’t touch me because I have a small down blanket over my lap.
I’ve got 22 cents, a bunch of movies, magazines to read, and a cup of tea.
And I can finally blame my sons’ knowledge of the “F” word on someone else. ‘Cause you know they’d never learn that from me. (In traffic, or having stubbed a toe, or having dropped a dish or. . . . )
Yeah, definitely not me.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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Sounds toasty and cosy!
Its summer in my hemisphere (I’m in Sydney, Australia).
A few years ago, I would have spent today, being pre-christmas, at my local shopping mall, frantically looking for stuff to buy for my gift list of about 30 relatives, and getting very stressed out.
Instead, I had a buy nothing day, and had lots of fun with my family.
I went for a walk around my hilly neighbourhood, taking in the sunshine and the beautiful greenery.
Then I had a coffee and breakfasted with a cooked breakfast with my family ( instead of going out for breakfast as we would have in the past) and then lingered over the newspapers.
Later in the day, we spent the afternoon having a family swim. My daughter is five and so she loves to play chasey in the pool, as well as spending lots of time underwater doing handstands.
We have a couple of ripe bananas in the fruit bowl so we are baking banana muffins together this afternoon.
Life is feeling much richer, and I didn’t have to consume at the shops!
However did people get used to being known as consumers instead of customers, or clients, or even just buyer? My little Websters, old, doesn’t even have a definition for consumer, but does define consume as destroy, expend, use up. I’d say that is pretty apt. Consumer = Destroyer. Yup.
One good first step might be for everyone, especially the media, to STOP referring to us all as consumers. Words have power.