Towards the end of the Diane Rehm
show on shopping addiction, one guest shared something that I found really
encouraging:
“So
I created a new tradition in my family that I don't actually give gifts. We
give experiences. So about five years ago when I first finished my master's in
financial planning, I really learned that my family had a lot of these issues
that I've come to know quite a bit about now. I knew nothing about them then.
And so I created a new tradition. I don't give gifts at all for birthdays,
Christmas, anything. But what I do is we give experiences. And so we spend more
time together. We do things that really build relationships. And I've now
taught my grandchildren the same thing. It was rough the first couple of years.”
The person who shared that new
tradition was a recovering shopping addict, and was finding a new way to cope
with holidays and other gift-giving occasions.
Like a recovering alcoholic trying to navigate employer cocktail
parties, that must be a very tough situation on many levels. Dealing with addiction while juggling social
expectations must be a challenge.
It was also fascinating to me that
this same person realized her family also had a lot of the same issues. So often in life, one of us will hit rock
bottom with a particular problem that wrecks our life. As we get a handle on that problem, we look
around us and realize others have the very same problem. But as this speaker seems to suggest, others
may not yet be cognizant of their problem, let alone trying to take productive
steps to deal with it.
The speaker said she no longer gives
“gifts” for Christmas and birthdays, but she gives “experiences.” I’ve heard plenty of people say that in other
contexts, but often times what they mean is they give a gift card for AMC Movie
Theatres, Massage Envy or for Applebee’s.
I don’t think that is what the speaker meant.
Giving gift cards is nice in the
sense that it doesn’t clutter up the recipient’s home. Gifts do that. Even when they are wonderful gifts.
When my husband and I got married
many years ago, we did so in his small hometown. Everyone knows one another. And it is deeply entrenched custom that
everyone is invited and everyone gives a gift.
Some of the gifts might be small.
Indeed, like many small towns, my husband’s hometown has not had a lot of
economic opportunity and most folks are not affluent. At weddings a gift might be one single fork
from a pattern of cutlery or one single tea cup from a place setting. But everyone gives something. My husband and I were so generously gifted on
the occasion of our wedding, but we only had a tiny one bedroom apartment where
the kitchen/living room blurred together without a dining room. It was already cramped getting into that
apartment once both of us had our stuff in it.
But with the arrival of wedding gifts, we literally had stacks all over
the place and couldn’t even enjoy what we’d been given.
Obviously, that is an extreme case,
but every time any of us gives gifts that happens on a smaller scale. Tangible gifts take up space. George Carlin did a funny monologue once
where he said “That’s all your house is:
a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t
have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house…Sometimes you gotta move, gotta
get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.” (It was much funnier when you heard Mr.
Carlin say those words; he had great intonation and timing.)
Anyhow, I don’t think the speaker of
the quoted language from the Diane Rehm show was talking about gift cards. She said, “But
what I do is we give experiences. And so we spend more time together. We do
things that really build relationships.”
I love that idea. But it is hard
to give experiences without engaging in the materialistic consumer culture all around
us. It is so deeply entrenched.
But as my kids get older, I treasure
those types of experiences and hope they do too. Taking walks.
Reading aloud. Cooking together. Cleaning up the back yard. Having a picnic. Just last week, my kids were so thrilled to
show me a “book” of art projects they had been working on. Last night, my older daughter read me a “novel”
she is writing in a spiral notebook. Each
time I had work that I would have liked to have done, but I thought about this
quote from the Diane Rehm show and gave them the “gift” of my time. Last week, we all got in bed and cuddled as they
explained each drawing in their “book.”
They are easily amused, so they were cracking up at some of the
drawings’ quirks, e.g., a missing arm, legs twice as long as the trunk of the
person, etc.
I worry sometimes that because of
our consumer culture we are collectively losing our ability to spend time
together without consuming products or services together, without spending
money. It is like consuming is all we
know anymore. We don’t know what to do
if we aren’t consuming.
So often when I visit with other
middle class mommy friends, what they share is essentially a laundry list of
consumer activities, e.g., we ate at Chili’s, then we had to go shopping for
the Lego set for the next birthday party, then we had to get new Sketchers and
there was a problem with a smart phone, so that had to be fixed. My mind reels.
We visited some relatives several years
ago and it was so nice because we never get to see their family. Our family was content hanging out at the
local playground and playing at their home, but they kept wanting to take all
the kids to the movies or go out to eat in very fancy restaurants.
A sweet friend of mine recently
lamented we never get to visit. Her
solution was that we ought to block out time to go out to dinner just the two
of us.
To me, just hanging out with people
I love and enjoy is fun. To spend time
with people, it is not necessary to go spend money on movies or fancy restaurants. I worry that in our culture most of us have
lost sight of the simpler things in life.
Most of us seem to be stuck on a conveyor belt of consumeristic
activities. What’s more, most of us don’t
seem to realize it. To me, that
realization is critical. Most of our
brothers and sisters on this planet do not live such extravagant lifestyles. A majority of the human beings on this planet
are just struggling to feed themselves and their loved ones.
2
Corinthians 9:8
And
God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you
will abound in every good work.
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