Losing Your Way

In previous posts I have discussed how I went from choosing to be homeless where I lived in the National Forest in a tent or in my truck to remodeling our simple dream home to eventually trading it all in for more, more, more in the suburbs. Where did I go wrong? I had always been so happy living a very simple life. At the age of 19 I had figured out how to work just enough to cover my bills then I snowboarded over 100 days a year or traveled the country to see live music festivals. In just 6 years I went from wanting almost nothing to thinking I needed more and more.

If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. In fact it does happen to almost everyone. Even famous people flip flop on what is important.

In 1992, Al Gore who was still just a U.S. Senator wrote a book called Earth in the Balance. He wrote, “The accumulation of material goods is at an all time high, but so is the number of people who feel an emptiness in their lives”. He goes on to say that our society promises happiness through, “the consumption of an endless stream of shiny new products… But the promise is always false.”

It sounded like we had found a leader who understood the problems of over consumption in our society. Senator Gore seemed to be just the person who could correct our screwed up system. However, by the time Al Gore was running for President in 2000 he vowed to increase the size of the U.S. economy by 30% in ten years.

He went from speaking out about the problems and emptiness of over consumption to vowing to increase consumption. He may have lost his way due to lobbyists and pressures to be elected, but there is something within us or within our society that makes us all decide to go for more and more.

I have realized that I don’t need more stuff. Actually, all I need more of is more time to spend doing the things I love with the people I love.

Tags: consumption, simplify

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 7:47 am and is filed under Simply Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.