Resolsution 2: Give More Pt 1

Man it feels good to have that first post done. It's been sitting as a draft for close to a year. It was like a treadmill that you bought in attempt to get in shape, but now is a really expensive place to hang clothes. It's done though. I feel good about it. I like the idea of minimalism, and it's something I might write about more in the future. 

On to Resolution 2: Give more Pt 1

I'll be honest. This one I haven't been good at. Over the past year I think it's safe to say I've given maybe total of a handful of change away. I mean I've donated a bunch of stuff to Goodwill after I've moved, but I don't think that counts. It's not like I was giving to a family who desperately needed a floral print couch with Dorito crumbs under the cushions. Goodwill just happened to be a lot closer than the dump.

It’s really easy for me to beat myself up for this. I can wallow in guilt and all that, but that’s just not helpful. Sure I can guilt myself into being generous for a while, but that never lasts and I go back to not being generous and then I feel like garbage about it and the whole cycle starts again. Instead of beating myself up I want to tell two stories. I believe that there are two primary ways of viewing ourselves, our resources, and our relationships with those resources that might give some insight into this idea of generosity.

In case you guys haven’t noticed it’s Christmas season out there. You can’t go anywhere without being run over by advertisements counting down the number of days left or telling you that you need to hurry because these supplies and prices won’t last. There are lists online of the hottest gifts of 2015 and you need to get them for your loved ones before they run out. Otherwise their holiday will be ruined! You don’t want that do you? And this all leads the frantic pace and constant stress and anxiety that leave so many of us just beat and secretly wishing that the holidays would just get over with already.

In marketing they call this the Scarcity Principle. It’s where the advertiser tries to convince us that supplies are running out or that we need to act now to lock in that low low price. It appeals to our caveman brain that still believes that we’re living in a cave and that if we don’t stockpile while we have the chance we’ll starve to death and become some saber tooth tiger’s next meal.

The thing is though, when you start to peel back the layers, all the marketing, the advertising, it’s all based on a particular way of viewing the world and it’s resources. Underneath it all is the belief that there is simply not enough. That there’s not enough money.  That there’s not enough time. That there’s not enough resources, and we run the risk of running out. So we need to accumulate all we can or else. This particular view of the world and it’s resources is built one built on scarcity.

This view has some pretty serious implications. There are around 7 billion people on this planet all with needs and wants of their own. But if there’s not enough resources for me, then there’s certainly not enough for them, right? I mean I have to take care of myself, my family, and my tribe first? We all need to get all we can, even if that means that some people are left without. They, of course, will attempt to do the same thing.  Can you blame them? Inherently this view places us in a state of competition, tension and violence with the world around us, with our neighbors, with the environment, with everything.

Is this really the way it is? Is there really not enough for everyone? Is it the case that human relationships are inherently based on competition, tension, and violence? Is the cold hard truth at the center of it all the fact that there’s not enough to go around and some people are just going to have to go without? 

Is scarcity really at the heart of it all?

Or is there something else?

That’ll be part two.
Peace

Resolution 1 Part 2: More experiences.

And I’m back after almost a year hiatus to finish Part 2 of my first New Year’s Resolution - Fewer things, More experiences.

This is one resolution that I'm happy to say I was able to make some progress This last year I was able to go to Ireland on a rugby tour. In addition to playing some of the best rugby I've ever played; I met wonderful people. I watched the St Patrick's day parade in downtown Limerick. I drank with locals in a bar until 3 in the morning singing Johnny Cash songs. I learned to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, and I have the diploma to prove it. I broke almost every single rule my parents gave me as a kid about taking food or rides from strangers. Later in the year I got the opportunity to visit a friend in Anguilla. I was able to spend a few days sitting on deserted white sand beaches watching the surf crash. We drove ATVs from one end of the island to the other, and I’m pretty sure that I’m doomed to get skin cancer after the resulting sunburn.

Experiences are what make life great. When I look back and think about all the important, beautiful, and memorable moments I've lived through, they were almost never because of what I had acquired. I've never looked back and thought, "Man I remember the good old days when I had dishes and plates that matched and weren't hand-me-downs from my parents." They were moments. It was the music of a local band playing in someone’s living room. It was laughing until I cried at the dinner table. It was holding my nephew and niece for the first time.


It doesn't have to be big stuff. For me a lot of this has been tied to travel, but it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to fly off to Europe on a whim and live out the plot of Eat Pray Love. It can just be little things. Take time to catch up with an old friend. Learn a new skill. I learned to ride a longboard this year. For a month my elbows were nothing but scabs and I could have sworn I had fractured my collarbone. But now I can add “Proficient at Longboarding” to my resume and who doesn’t want that?


To go back to my original point of "Fewer things" I'm not saying having stuff is bad. I love stuff. I love my stuff. It's just that I'm going to remember and cherish the fact that every year my brothers and I go out and play paintball in the mud and snow the day after Christmas far more than I'm going to cherish the paintball gun that's in my closet and gathers dust the other 364 days out of the year.

x

Just Finish Something For Once

I struggle when it comes to finishing things. Just look at my blog post entries for the last year. I started with this really great idea to talk about these resolutions and how I was gonna work them out and I was gonna tell you all about the great stuff that was going to come about because of it. It was going to AWESOME.
I didn't make it to the end of January.

The thing is I do this sort of thing all the time. I come up with a great idea for a project and I'm really excited about it. It's going to be the best thing in the world. So I start putting work in. I get momentum. I see progress. But inevitably at some point the excitement fades. It's no longer fun. The progress isn't as evident as it used to be and I get get discouraged. Then a million distractions start to pile up and they all promise to be the next big thing and that the current thing isn't really where it's at.

I struggle with discipline when it comes to working. I'm realizing that maybe projects can't be powered off of excitement alone. Motivation isn't enough. At some point the excitement is gone and the only thing that you have left is grit and self-discipline. Discipline shows up and gets the work done when motivation takes the day off. I have a lot of cool of ideas for projects that I want to start on in the next year and I know that none of them will get done if I don't have the discipline to see them through.

So yeah, I'm gonna finish something. I'm gonna finish this list of Resolutions by the end of the year. I know it's gonna be sloppy. I'm probably gonna hate seven out of every ten words I write, but my procrastination is really good at disguising itself as perfectionism. I'm gonna have the next thing up tomorrow evening.
Have a good one guys.