Let me tell you a story. It’s a familiar story. Maybe you know it. A man and a woman fall in love. They realize they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. They begin to talk about a possible future together and what that could look like. So the man begins to make a plan. Searching on Google, he finds “7 Tips for Planning the Perfect Proposal,” and he’s off. He enlists her best friend as his co-conspirator and he scouts out the perfect location to pop the question. He hires a professional photographer who will lurk just out of sight and be ready to capture the big moment. Everything will be shared on their social media accounts – Facebook, Instagram – with tons of “likes” and “Congratulations!”
Once they are engaged, the couple begins planning their wedding. They know that the planning phase will take about two years, because they have friends who have gone through this. So they begin with the first step: visit the potential wedding venues so they can compare them on size, attractiveness, availability, price, and other variables. Once they make this decision, they can set a date and proceed through the following steps, which include finding a wedding photographer and videographer, caterer, baker, band, florist, dressmaker, and so on.
The big day arrives, or should I say “days” – because along with the wedding itself there are the pre-wedding parties (bachelor party, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner; then there’s the wedding and the reception; and the post-reception brunch. Then a honeymoon trip, after which the husband and wife settle in to begin their life together.
They want to buy a home, but the truth is they are financially tapped out from the wedding event and all the accompanying events. This would be a problem, except that there are mortgages available for first-time homebuyers who don’t have the standard down payment. If they play their cards right, they can start the home buying process with only a few thousand dollars – and that much they are hoping they can get from a cash advance on their credit cards.
Now they are homeowners … sort of. I mean, they don’t actually own anything; the fact of the matter is the banks own them. But they have their dream house, and they tweet about it to all their friends, post a picture of the happy couple standing in front of the “Sold” sign on all the social media sites, so it’s official. And now they can start their family.
One happy morning she takes the home pregnancy test and it’s positive! She doesn’t tweet this, though they do share it with a few family members and close friends. She’s pregnant. We all know what this means: let the baby-shopping season begin! Because, of course, babies need so many things: diapers, diaper bags, diaper genie, onesies, snugglies, blankies, spit cloths, bottles, pacifiers, rattles, Baby Einstein toys so baby’s genius potential can be realized, cribs, pack & plays, swings, bouncy seats, high chairs, portable high chairs, strollers, baby monitors, sound machines … I think there are many more things that I don’t even know about, but whatever they are, they are things that babies need, things that mothers and fathers need, things that will be an important part of their happy home.
Finally the baby arrives – and the event is recorded. And shared. Now they are three.
They want the best they can possibly offer their beloved child – the best toys to stimulate this developing mind, the best and safest car to travel to baby gym class. The best neighborhood…the best schools…they’ve been thinking. This house of theirs may not be suitable anymore. The schools are not great – they’re ok, but not great – and the parks are a little sketchy, and besides that it’s starting to feel kind of small, what with all this baby gear that takes up so much space. They have been thinking…and they think it’s time to start looking for a bigger and better home. The problem is they don’t really have any equity yet. But they think that they can sell the house and break even; then if they use what they’ve saved up in a retirement account they can get the house they need.
Are we getting tired of this story yet? I know I certainly am.
This modern American lifestyle is just the latest incarnation of the problem that’s plagued humankind since the beginning, since humans discovered stuff. This adorable couple is just the latest version of the rich fool who had to build bigger barns to store his grain. So it would have a nice place to sit and rot.
We shouldn’t judge this man too harshly. The farmer Jesus tells us about in the parable is not a bad man. Clearly, he has worked hard and been a good steward of the land. It has produced well for him and that is good from any perspective. That is something with which he can be satisfied – even proud. But what happens next is not.
He sees that he has an abundance of food. He has a lot of food. He has too much food…more than he can consume. But all of a sudden, his perception changes and this abundance is not too much at all. It is just what he needs! He absolutely must have all this food, so the problem becomes how to manage it. His storehouses are full and there is still much more food waiting to be stored. He’s on the verge of panic. The only possibly solution is to build more storage. Only then can he feel secure and be at peace.
Maybe you already know this, but peace won’t come from full storage barns. Security will not be the reward for hoarding food. True contentment does not arise from having enough of the right stuff.
Maybe you know what really happens. As soon as you have acquired as much stuff as you thought you needed, you realize there is something else; you realize that there is more stuff out there that you don’t have. Until now, you had no idea you needed that stuff; but now that you know about it, you can’t rest until you have that stuff too. You need it.
Or so we think. This is a story about some of the less attractive qualities of being human: envy, greed, anxiety. “Tell my brother to share our father’s inheritance with me, Jesus. It’s not fair. Jesus, help me; I should have as much as he has.” And the anxiety is an inevitable byproduct of living in the material world. From the moment we discover there are things we don’t have that we must acquire, to the moment we acquire it and have to figure out how to manage it, to the moment we discover that there is yet something else we don’t have, and so on.
Our lives are spent chasing after things to acquire– and experiences to check off our bucket lists – but we are so occupied with the chase that we barely enjoy the experience. We are barely present to experience them. We are too busy orchestrating photo ops to organize in scrapbooks or upload to social media sites.
We buy products that have built in obsolescence, so we’ve no sooner gotten used to it that we have to replace it with a new and better product which we will try to figure out how to use. We order, we buy, we service, we fiddle with our stuff. We marvel at these amazing new things. We nearly go cross-eyed trying to read the instructions and we give up and hand it over to our grandkids in the hope that they can intuitively work it out. This is normal in the modern American life.
The young couple in my story are on the upward side of the trajectory, of achieving the American dream. Many of us are on the other side, but we are not immune to the lure of acquisition. We still watch TV and see the ads for everything we must have which we didn’t know until this moment. We still use shopping as a form of therapy and entertainment. And now we have grown kids who come to our house and tell us, “it’s time to replace that ugly fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, no one has those things anymore, for heaven’s sake, get some pendant lights.”
But now we watch our retirement accounts fearfully. When the stock market goes up, we breathe relief. When it goes down, we toss and turn at night wondering if we will be okay, if we will have enough.
+++
The story of the young couple isn’t over. They get their bigger house in the better neighborhood and empty their little retirement account in the process. Over the next few years there are two more children, more stuff, and all the camps and lessons and activities that you would expect. They keep thinking they’ll get ahead next year; that they’ll get their situation under control; get a little breathing room soon. But every year is the same as the one before – only worse.
One morning they wake up. They realize they can’t live this way anymore because they aren’t really living. They have to find another way, and the only way will be to rid themselves of some of their possessions. They sell the house and buy something much smaller and simpler. They sell one of their four cars (well, it’s a start). They give some of their furniture and books and other things to the church rummage sale, to the homeless shelter, to the Goodwill – knowing that they will not replace these things with newer versions, like they normally would do. They learn how to unsubscribe from email lists that scream at them to buy more stuff. They learn to cook and eat at home. And they discover some of the simple joys in life they had always been too busy for.
They are learning how to disengage from the consumer treadmill, where the fundamental creed is the more you have, the happier you are, because they’ve finally realized it’s a lie. They are learning that if they value their lives by the quality and quantity of the stuff they have, they will never really believe their lives have value at all.
They are learning the secret of having plenty and of being in need, as the apostle Paul wrote. They are learning to be content.
They are learning to be content. Which is a journey itself.
____________________________________
Photo by Ruchindra Gunasekara on Unsplash
