if you have children then you to have seen it happen. the change. the first big change. the reaching out to the outside world and watching with awe and wonder as the small being realizes that things are gotten, not by growing, harvesting, killing, and working on making things, but by buying them. my charming son, often with an eager, “i love you mommy” and a penchant for all things boy: swords, guns, dragons, snakes, spiders, sharks, and all the adorable sound effects that go along with such “eventures” made this developmental leap the other day. he realized that mommy can buy the things he sees in stores and on gradma’s t.v. he now gives me the rundown of all the things he wants me to buy him on the way to town. a dinosaur with wings. a black shirt. a black pair of pants. black boots. a black car. a black house. (bad guys are the dish du jour around these here parts...)
not yet four, but getting closer every day, the developmental leap of the consumer has been made. a store does not go by nor hardly an item now without the attachment need-greed extending itself. i read a calvin and
but my son is happy without them and quickly forgets all the lists of things that he wants and doesn’t get. and yes i am still a mommy sucker and i do get him a toy in town...but i am drawn to realize how little we as a society have gotten past the toddler stage. why do we seem to live on this visceral i want it, i need it, give it to me level?
in the true fashion of little kids, we want what we want, and if nobody tells us no, then we will just keep on stuffing the toilet with whatever we can find, or buy on credit, because it is fun. and hey, when you are three you don’t have to deal with the flooding or the plumber. and yeah, there might be some noise, and some people will get angry, but you probably won’t see the mess and certainly not the bills. but boy, doesn’t that plastic superhero look cool swirling around the vortex?
how am i any different, succumbing to society’s pressures, when i buy that plastic toy (which i know to be evil from beginning to end) just so that my boy will love me just a bit more for the moment? aren’t we all headed for the toilet if we can’t see the dangers of our lifestyles, let alone change them? is there any reconciliation between my views and how i live? am i destined to be the hypocrite i crave not to be? is there any way to live without internal conflict with external reality? if i focus my mind enough, cant i change reality? can i change myself?
i have. ironically, it is having children that has led me down this path of action. i want a world for them in the future that hasn’t completely gone to shit, yet i want them to be happy now. it is for this happiness that i cannot completely change. me thinks i must try harder to find things for them that don’t compromise my values. me thinks i still have a long way to go.
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