The Freeze

I've just returned from a long trip in Europe. The end of this trip has meant saying goodbye to several precious things: weeks of vacation, an internet-free cocoon in our small Berlin apartment, and saying goodbye to a dear partner for serval months. The hole in my heart and my life is real. It will take time to heal and fill in. I find myself, my first night home and alone, browsing Amazon, Etsy, and Barnes and Noble. Instantly on returning home I am looking for a way to recreate myself, reshape myself, somehow change the way I live to reflect how I have changed while I have been away. These things, though -- these are not wisdom, these are not real, these are not substantial, meaningful change no matter how much I may want them to be. They are distractions. They allow me to feel productive while the real work of living as a more open, honest, deliberate human being drifts by undone and the world remains exactly as it was. I am following the events in Ferguson, like many young white individuals, with sadness and a sense of absolute hopelessness. I feel like the moral center of my generation has been wrenched from my hands while I stand helplessly by. I do not know how to communicate with those who are creating violence and mayhem. I do not have the vocabulary, the reference to speak to the experience of a police officer or a person of color. So, instead of doing something of value, I consume. I read Twitter, watch the news, read blog post upon blog post about "what white people can do" and every time conclude that the answer is: as individuals, not much worth anything. These two experiences are not disconnected. The drive to fill a void with consumption of popular media* is the same in both cases. The drive to cover my grief with acquisition of information or objects is the same -- and critically, it is ineffective, distracting, and disempowering in the same way. If I can mask my grief and guilt about Ferguson in the act of "getting educated" (reading Twitter) I can comfortably withhold my action from the world. I can not show up at protests, I can continue to spend money enriching those who continue the system, I can sit at home and do absolutely nothing. Reading social media is not an act of social justice. When the Big Media doesn't deliver news honestly (or is forcibly kept from seeing what's happening) reading on-the-ground social media accounts of protests is essential. It necessary as preparation and defense against the message machines set up by rich special interests. But it is not an act of social justice. I don't know what to do about Ferguson. And I don't know what to do about the grief that overwhelms me when I realize I am returning to a daily life that has been created for somebody I no longer am. But I do know one thing: whatever my ability to answer these challenges may be, the action will be driven by discomfort. The first step to change is to get real uncomfortable with the way things currently are. We all get really, really good at keeping ourselves comfortable. We have no end of access to numbing agents: media, chemicals, things to buy. The one thing I've noticed these numbing agents have in common (what's the connection between a pack of cigarettes and a new set of throw pillows?) is that they are all rooted in consumption**. SO, I have decided that the way to wisdom is to stop buying shit. I don't know what I truly want, what I feel, what I can do because I've gotten so good at distracting myself by shopping and buying and curating my own world so that I can live in comfort. I suspect we all do this. So, as an experiment, for the next 30 days I am going on a purchasing freeze. I shan't be buying anything at all, with a few exceptions. I'll let you know how it goes... EXCEPTIONS: Gas Groceries Coffee (Because coffee = time in coffee shops, which is valuable to me/vital to my social life.) ----- * I think clothes/books/jewelry/home decor are also media, in that their primary goal is to deliver & instill a particular message about the world. ** I'm pretty sure there's a political soapbox to get on somewhere in this sentence. Corporations make us uncomfortable by denying our inherent sense of moral decency (people working full time who are still below the poverty line, anyone?), and then have quite a lot to sell us in order to help soothe that discomfort...