Consumption

I grew up in a family of shoppers. My grandmother's home was filled with items large and small: gemstone rings, TV-offer-only Cuisinarts, Coca-Cola collectibles, random flea market tchotchkes, fake flower arrangements, trinkety Walgreens finds, candies and family heirlooms and little kleenex packages and all the items sold on 2am infomercials.

Her favorite quote from my childhood: "Paw-Paw makes the money and Ma-Maw spends it!"

I think she found shopping relaxing, or perhaps elating. My guess was it grew out of her childhood of poverty and her experience of the depression. She was a cupboards-jammed-full kind of woman... finding a sense of stability and assuaging her many anxieties in the process of possession.

What is interesting, however, is the way her behavior then passed to my mother - another shopper at heart. Like my grandmother, my mother (I think) has integrated shopping into her modes of communication and introspection.

We were a greeting card family - a care-package bunch; my mother, I suspect, sometimes uses trips to the store as a form of meditation or solitude... and she communicates her love, in part, through things that resonate, for her, with the frequency of the intended recipient.

I find that much of my understanding and meaning-making when it comes to family, parenting, home-life is linked to a lifetime of shopping. I enjoy window shopping, gift-shopping, grocery-shopping, card-shopping, bath-and-body/decor/artwork/furniture/music, books, and more-shopping. I spend hours on errands that should only take minutes, and I find myself fighting the urge to buy my daughter something on every trip. So that she will know I am thinking of her. That I love her. That she is important to me.

Even though my relationship to consumption of goods has changed in the last few years, I still find myself drawn to the act of buying... of selecting and owning and carrying things... as an emotional touchstone. I go to the store when I'm sad. I sometimes equate my sense of self with the things I possess. I wish to believe (if I am honest with myself) my love can be communicated with a thing - because I so often fail to adequately communicate my heart through my words and deeds.

Consumption is a funny thing when you begin to really notice it... a sort of integrated and inescapable thread that runs through infinite aspects of our daily lives. It's so ingrained in our culture - in our senses of self.

Food, clothing, cars, homes, media, technology, electricity, gas - necessities and luxuries and everything in between. It is such a wide spectrum along which we tread, sometimes it's hard to know whether we are filling a need that is real or one that is an illusion.

As I seek to become more aware of my relationship to consumption and to consider the legacy I will pass on to my daughter, I have started to seek out what might best be described as a sense of insatiable hunger. It is the empty aching longing of the hungry ghost... and when I am awake to it, I notice it showing up in many areas of my life. Today I realized that every time I am a hungry ghost, I begin to consume.

This translates to eating cookies when I am not hungry, plodding mindlessly through Facebook when I am lonely, buying Starbucks when I am directionless, searching real estate listings when I am restless, driving my car when I am emotionally stuck, watching TV when I am resisting, and looking for clothes my daughter does not need when I am missing her.

It is no mistake, I think, the definition of consumption includes both the act of consuming and the state of being consumed. It may be impossible to consume without, on some level, being consumed by the thing you are consuming. The hungry ghost is suffering personified. It is the self of attachment and longing and mindless consumption driven by illusory goals.

The Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta (founder of Buddhism) said:

Peace comes from within.
Do not seek it without.

Of course, sometimes the simplest of notions is the hardest to put into action. But I am trying. Striving to consume mindfully and consider my legacy and confront the ghost within so I may replace her with a sense of peace.

May you be alert to your needs and your desires - and strive to discern the difference between the two.

Awakening

I don't know about you, but sometimes I self-destruct a little bit. Make bad choices, go into a downward emotional spiral, bury my head or body or heart or all of the above in some metaphorical sand and stand - not in a state of stuckness but more in an act of undoing - eyes shut, ears covered, head down.

Thankfully, there is always a point at which I reemerge into the world. Sync up a bit more with the authentic present and begin to interact/breathe/live in a way that is more genuine and less clouded with gunk.

Gunk, I think, is the unnecessary stuff we carry with us that has nothing to do with the present and everything to do with an attachment to some emotion, some pattern, some expectation, some script with which we are determined not to part. It's the illusion we allow to overtake reality... the shadow that engulfs and distorts things as they are. We become hungry ghosts: eating ourselves up in a flurry of mistaken and misdirected believing, thinking, saying, doing.

My last post was April 7. And it was about tension. Which is pretty funny. And I could say I stopped writing because I was in Too Much Light... or because we were all getting sick or because school and job searching and whatnot got too busy. But none of that would be true.

I stopped writing. I stopped meditating. I stopped hanging out with people. I stopped connecting to my family. I stopped reading. I stopped being patient. I stopped having faith. I stopped liking myself. I stopped trusting others.

And from an outside perspective (certainly to anyone attuned to such things), it sounds like textbook depression. But this felt different somehow. Not just the chemical roller-coaster of hormones or the genetic squish of generational institutionalization. This was more active than the slack-fingered cling of hopelessness; darker than the shadowed stagnancy of sadness.

It was a form of running away. And I am grateful for all the little "ah ha" moments that led to enough clarity to stop.

So. I am awake now. This week has been a process of blinking in the sun and remembering to be still. To be silent (sometimes literally enforced by my body in an act of gentle determination). To be present. To be honest, and patient, and calm, and compassionate, and - perhaps more than anything else - tenacious.

Someday this Japanese proverb will be tattooed on my skin:

Fall seven times.
Stand up eight.

It's the greatest act of courage we can muster, I think. To push past failure, and weakness, and cruelty, and stupidity, and error, and thoughtlessness, and pride, and envy, and all those myriad and inescapable puddles of human-ness... to rise again and persevere.

Wake up. Forgive. Find peace. Move again.

May you awaken in ways that make you feel more alive and more present. May you display tenacious courage and unshakable peace, even in moments of seeming failure.

Money

"Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about other people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."
~ Lao-Tzu

I hate money. Probably as much as I desire it. In fact, my abhorrence likely arises from my desire and attachment. More than anything else, money worries can shake my core so strongly my insides wind up quivering with anxiety and my worldview goes from relatively calm and hopeful to deeply panicked and a mite conspiratorial.

An insurance bill arrives. Panic. The car needs repair. Panic. The dog is sick. Panic. The taxes are soon due. Panic. There are a veritable dearth of jobs posted in my field and we're not even sure I can work full-time yet without all of us careening into rudderless thrashing as we seek to balance preschool/housework/homecare/lifestuff with the practicalities of a toddler how may not yet be ready for a full schedule and two parents working their butts off. Yes, panic.

In my calmer moments, I remember to be grateful. I recognize the blessings of my situation and consider all those in even less secure states than that of my family. We are very, very lucky.

So why, then, this constant buzz of worry? Why do I create a self-imposed tug-of-war between using time heretofore unavailable to pursue something intangible, unpaid, fulfilling, or otherwise un-monied... versus filling each spare moment with a frantic and downhearted search for some kind of income stream that miraculously snuggles into our three lives with perfect conformity?

The conscious inner scrutiny of the last year or so has uncovered some less-than-attractive traits. My tendency toward immobility despite high potential. Persistent ennui borne of low self-esteem and too-often lack of motivation. A pessimistic attitude worsened by emotional bouts of fruitless anxiety. And a nagging belief that even if such things as finding the job you love, working and then concerning yourself with the outcome, or living without concern for financial stability were possible... they are not possible for me.

Oh this is a whiny post. Sorry about that! So... the point. The spiritual lesson and potential opportunity of my awareness in this moment:

I think what Lao-Tzu is emphasizing in the above, is the hungry aspect of acquiring certain things in one's life. There is danger in seeking so blindly we overlook the purpose behind our search, or fail to question the rightness of our actions (like a hungry ghost).

When I read his words, I think about how my attachment to security (be it financial, emotional, or otherwise) has more to do with the outer nature of things than my inner experience. I name security through what I possess, rather than what I do. I attach it to how I feel, rather than how I behave. I seek it from outside - from others - rather than remembering it is ultimately inside, within my control and solely my responsibility for maintaining.

Today I think money is a food that does not fill, an activity that does not sate. Because even when I have enough, I am always worried I need more. This knowing of money addresses my own emptiness and refuses to look away when I see fear.

It is sugar. Or cigarettes. Or sex. Compliments, trappings, extravagance and desserts piled high atop over-caloric meals on sauce-strewn plates.

Empty echoing emptiness.

May you awake to your emptiness and embrace it without actions of fear. May you fill yourself in serenity.