Lately I am just feeling like a number, a statistic. Feeling like all decisions are being made for me to maximize someone else’s shareholder return (and executive bonuses). My fantastically complicated and sophisticated computer is just fine, it is just that the little screws and hinges and other dumb things are falling apart (when they are planned to). Off to the landfill….wherever that mythical place is! I keep picturing these dystopian middle-ages landscape of pollution and disease, likely in countries I will never step foot in. I have a stack of old cell phones and thirty pound laptops in a closet. Do you too?
Dishonesty is all around us. But we allow this, WE build the world. WE are the world. WE are the planned screws falling off a computer and the oscillation between congressional gridlock and passage of unsustainable legislation. We collectively are okay with planned obsolescence of the glue holding the soles of our shoes on and the asymmetry of buying a plane ticket. We buy plane tickets with little or no ability to change them knowing full-well that the airline has oversold the plane and will likely cancel one or more of the flights that day or at least change the time (sometimes to arrive after our next leg departs!). What does this say about us? More importantly, how do we do these exact same things at the individual micro-level? It’s pretty much always mea culpa after all.
Part of the answer, which is the answer to everything of course, is to be present, to be honest, humble, full-of gratitude, and give up on the illusion of control, fairness, entitlement, good and bad. Part of the answer is to simply start thinking. We need to begin everyday with gratitude, which reminds me, I have not written in my journal yet this morning, pardon me, I will return in a moment!
I usually write four gratitudes each morning. Pen to paper in my sacred little book. Today I decided to write thirteen instead. Hopefully that will give me the strength to find the good in the bad of shoe soles falling off and screws falling out of computers with i7 intel chips inside.
The silver lining in all this is that it is nothing more than an opportunity, as everything is. An opportunity to see how we build failing obsolescence into our lives and relationships and thus construct the world around us with dishonesty as a basic building block. There is no way that one should be able to fly to Europe from Seattle roundtrip for $140 plus taxes and fees but that is what I just found on iceland air to Dublin. We build this land of smoke and mirrors and buy two get three free (the new pricing model for soda after the recent spike in inflation). A pound of coffee sure isn’t a pound any longer. What exactly do you call a half gallon of OJ now that it is 59 oz?
The world won’t change unless we change it. It does not begin with the big corporations, it begins with us. We need to admit that we want it all without paying our fair share. We want free social media without our data being sold. We need to look deeply into our narratives and admit they blind us to the reality in front of us at times. We need to stop looking outward and instead look inward.
Here let me model that for you, I am still succumbing to pennywise-pound foolish. I still have an inflated sense of self and a feeling of both entitlement and victimhood (not all the time, but more than I likely realize!) I do kind things often because I crave the subsequent thank-you. Would I hold the door open for anyone if I knew that they would not thank me? Would I do anything for others if not driven by a sense of insecurity about my own safety.? Of course I would, but would I as often as I think I would?
To me the sad thing is not in the fact that so many companies’ business models are predicated on planned obsolescence to drive further sales but in the carnage of the earth and our limited resources that follows. But we always wake up the next morning. We have not run out of resources nor hope nor love. Love and connection, maybe that is the anecdote? Presence? Okay, it is presence again. From presence flows gratitude and a growing swell of healing.
My newest pair of shoes are holding up really well after more than 400 miles of walking in them, maybe 500. I’ll start with that. I’ll declare victory for the day for humanity. We did it for a day. We did it for one pair of shoes. Let’s build on that tomorrow 🙂
