Every Wednesday, we hope to write about “giving to others” as part of our Happiness Project.   

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven [...] A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away”, originally Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, more recently lots of folk singers

Knowing that the saying “change is the only constant” is true, it still feels like there are some huge ones going on right now.  The Election.  The Economy.  The Environment.  I have heard my husband say we need to “batten down the hatches” so many times in the last two weeks.   “We” means our immediate family, our employers, our nation, our planet, maybe even martians - anyone and everyone.  Every time he says it, he’s talking about how scary our economic crisis is and will be.  I laugh in my head every time he says it.  It isn’t funny, but I laugh for two reasons: one, he has never really been on a boat, so I know he has never battened any hatches but he keeps saying it and two, he is the least dramatic person in the universe but he keeps saying it.  

The other day, I (me, the dramatic one, the one prone to catastrophe-think) was encouraging him to stop talking about it in such a disastrous tone.  I told him that I’d be happy to talk about the choices we have in the matter, how even the worst (losing a job, selling our house, moving to a small apartment) wouldn’t be bad at all as long as we have each other and our health and how my bird-flu stash really might come in handy when the riots break out.

I have realized over time that it creates harmony for me when I approach things that seem overwhelming based on a choice.  It is empowering.  I learned to say to my kids “you have a choice to make” when I was hoping to see a change in their behavior.  Giving them a choice between a positive outcome and a consequence empowers them too.  It works.

Making a choice in the Election may not be easy, but it is straightforward.  We vote.  But choices regarding the Environment and Economy aren’t as obvious to me.  Especially given the holiday season we are entering.  Even before the current situation with the economy, I have had a long standing, slightly icky feeling when Christmas gift buying season rolls around.  This feeling showed up when I had kids.  It is so fun to buy them everything we see and think they will love.  Our six aunts and uncles and four grandparents feel the same way.  We are lucky we can afford to buy and that we are loved.  The ick comes in when I walk into a giant warehouse toy store and see the floor-to-ceiling toys and think of kids in Pakistan who don’t have pencils.  Then I get it again when I look around a few months later and wonder how all of that stuff got into our house and how the kids outgrew it so fast.  And then I think of how we are just one little family and I envision piles of discarded toys from families like ours in a mountain as big as K2.   It feels so materialistic and so wasteful. But I love santa so much and I haven’t figured out how he can drop a big pile of love and laughter on the floor and get pencils to Pakistan after he eats the cookies and the reindeer eat the oatmeal we’ve left out.

So, I’m making a choice.  I have decided to buy as many gifts for the kids that I can in a recycled way.  I’m searching mostly craigslist to try to get items from other local families.  I am going to think about an approach to wrapping that doesn’t include new wrapping paper (sheets?, leaves?, a big tarp?, stuff everything in the sleeping bags that are one of the gifts?).  I’ll try to send out Christmas postcards instead of cards with envelopes.  I’ll tell everyone I know (right now) to read two things: Al Gore’s essay The Climate for Change and Greg Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea.  We’ll see how this goes.   This is tiny - we’ll save a little money and contribute a wee bit less to the moutain of plastic toy waste.  It is still materialistic.  But it feels good to add a personal priority to something that was kind of icky and to batten down the hatches a little!

Posted under Giving to Others, Happiness Project