Today's blog is based on the section entitled "A Life Well Lived" from the chapter on "Time" in Wayne Muller's book "Sabbath".
After 9/11, I remember President Bush telling America that the best thing we could do was to go shopping.
Really?
Really.
Of course, I understand that after an attack which brought one of the bright and shining symbols of our free-market economy tumbling to the ground in a pile of twisted rubble, one might fear that our actual economy would follow suit, and therefore shopping was a perfectly reasonable response to such a tragedy.
Really.
Really?
Well, one might contend that our actual economy has followed suit. Sending Americans out to the mall on 9/12 didn't save the economy. And, shopping will not save us in the way we fool ourselves into thinking it will.
Really.
We will not become those people we see in commercials. Having more things, or better things won't make us more successful.
Really.
So, what';s your relationship to shopping? Has it become your main leisure activity? How much more time would you have if you didn't "go shopping" as a leisure activity?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I used to "go shopping" as a leisure time activity but not so much anymore. If anything, I feel burdened by the shopping I did in the past, by purchases I made that now clutter my house, by money ill-used on things that don't matter instead of saved so that I could now be using it in better ways.
ReplyDeleteIt is a combination of much-tightened finances, a reordering of priorities, and the ability to shop via internet that brings me to my current place. My current place is that shopping is done when necessary for those items that are necessary without the traditional shopping experience. I get online, find what I need, search out the best price by a vendor I trust, order and be done with it. Between that and my almost weekly trips to Meijer for groceries I rarely need to go shopping and don't.