Gimme Gimme

Among the many reasons children are blessings are the lessons they teach us.  We, the experienced, should know better, but sometimes it takes the insanity of the young to show us our follies.  Today, as I gave my children a bath, my son Luke gave me just such a valuable life lesson.  As he sat in the water, he spied a rubber ducky- and grabbed it.  He saw another, and took that in his other hand.  He then laid eyes on a toy turtle, and managed to pick that up by wedging it between the two ducks in his hands.  He then sat there for the rest of the bath, doing absolutely nothing other than trying to maintain his hold on what he had, and greedily try to grasp more toys floating in the water.  I couldn't believe it- he was missing out on any sort of enjoyment due to his greed- his insatiable desire for more.  While I chewed on that in my mind, I couldn't help but be convicted of the many ways I'm guilty of just the same thing.

Anyone who follows this blog* knows that I think about materialism in its different forms rather frequently.  That's mainly because I struggle with it so much.  Not just the physical stuff, but the experiences, too- the traveling, the local events, the opportunities life has to offer- it's so easy for me to get caught up in it.  And,  in the last few months, I've become increasingly convinced of just how wrong, yet pervasive, it is.

Our culture is a "collecting" one.  Books, movies, electronics, games, toys, food, and other material things roll into our households all the time.  Some fight back- and perhaps you've seen the "collect memories, not things" slogans circulating on the Internet- but even then, when you dwell on that, you see how our tendency to horde has seeped into such good intentions.  Collect memories- get as many as you can.  See as many places as you can.  Hang out with as many people.  Do as much as you can.  Do, do, do.  Gimme, gimme, gimme.  We are (or at least I am) those people sitting in the tub, hording the toys and enjoying none of them. 

After watching my son and his ridiculous act, I was humbled.  I looked at the games that I own- and realized that I play only 10 of the (probably 30) that we own.  I looked at my books- and see works that have sat on the shelf for 10+ years, while I've purchased others (I own 90 that I haven't yet read).  I looked at my movies, and see dozens that I own because "they were on sale" and "it's nice to watch them now and then," which means I'll see them probably once a decade- and I noticed that I own about 20 that I haven't ever watched, planning to "get around to it one of these days."  Then I looked at my kids' toys- I won't bother elaborating on that mess.  I turned from stuff to experiences, and I saw the same.  We've done so much that it's not uncommon to see a picture and have to think about what country it was taken in.  I think on what we've done in the last two months and hardly remember, because our time is so jam-packed with activities that our existence becomes one of running from one event to the next, with no time to process.  The bottom line is, I'm the one with the rubber duckies.  Holding them, hording them, stressed out because "there's so much to do," while doing nothing for fear of dropping one.  In short, I'm nuts- God be merciful, and strengthen me to live life as I ought.  I can't have (or do) it all, so help me have (and do) what matters.

*if that's true of anyone in this world