I wrote my first version of this post back in November of 2014. I was initially inspired to write it in response to something a friend wrote AND because I saw an article stating that America must be broke since Black Friday sales were down (determined by a mid-day poll of shoppers) by 11% from the previous year. It never even occurred to them that maybe, just maybe, we are choosing not to go out and buy crap on Black Friday just because we can, and that many people chose to boycott this year's BF as a statement of protest to the way that needless consumerism and subsequent unsecured dept is affecting our country. The following is my expanded version.
With all the emphasis on BUYING and SPENDING that we Americans are inundated with during the upcoming Holidays season, I believe that media works to trigger subconscious feelings of lack and inadequacy. I think that our culture’s present concept of abundance and prosperity is manipulated and skewed by a corporate need for our participation in events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday which promotes the idea that our value as loved ones is equal to amount of money we spend on our friends and family. In light of all of this I offer this contemplation which I periodically reopen and examine…
Every so often I meditate on how much abundance most of us have access to practically by default by living in this part of the world during this time in the history of humanity. Unless you are currently living in Flint Michigan, most of us in the US have access to running water and yet perhaps just as importantly we have efficient & safe sewage treatment and trash and recycling programs. Most of us have continuous access to electricity and central heating. We have access to antibiotics and other medicine when we are sick and easy availability of effective over the counter pain killers when we hurt. In addition, many of us can acquire nearly any herb, Essential Oil or supplement we could conceive of either at the local health food store or online with relative ease. With but a few keystrokes we can gain access to information and resources for wholistic health protocols when we want to explore alternatives or adjunctive approaches to allopathic treatment alone.
We have access to the Internet. If you are reading this here on my blog or FB this means that this is true for you too. We have nearly instant access to practically any book, song, movie or information our heart could desire. Never before in any other time on this planet has access to information been more readily & instantly available. Even thirty years ago, it took days for letters to travel from one state to another and the quickest way to deliver vital information was with a telegram. It was customary for things to take 4-8 weeks to arrive via mail order, and the only way we could access old information was by going into dusty basements or attics storing archives and looking it up on microfiche. Now we consider it inconvenient when we must wait more than 3 days for shipping, or for a webpage to take more than 5 seconds to download. We have network of safe and fairly well maintained roads that will take us from Portland to Portland and Fargo to Houston. We have an infrastructure in place to put out fires when they happen, to respond to all kinds of emergencies (both criminal and medical) while providing life saving assistance, to offer education to our children and to rebuild after nearly any kind of disaster strikes.
Two or three hundred years ago we could have been royalty in the wealthiest kingdom in the world and we’d still be sitting in a drafty room hoping for the fire to catch in the hearth while we sat on our chamber pot and then cracked the ice off the top of our wash basin to rinse our hands. If it was night time we’d be reading one of the few books we owned for the 20th time by candle light. Yet despite our royal status we might suffer from polio, syphilis or some other chronic illness that medicine, diet and lifestyle interventions can easily prevent now. A journey that might take us 1 hour to make in a car or perhaps an hour and 15 minutes on a public bus, would take 15 hours to make via horse and carriage along the unpaved roads of the time. Even as aristocracy we’d likely own but 1 or 2 pairs of shoes or boots, 1 cloak/coat, a few hats, 2 or maybe 3 full outfits of clothing. And lets not forget to mention the infrequency of bathing and access to abundant quantities of hot water.
So when you consider all this… I ask you “what is weath?” “Who is wealthy?” And so I offer the following affirmation: I acknowledge & appreciate the Abundance in my Life at this Very Moment.
