when you focus your energy on obtaining more and more goods, you can easily fall into a pernicious scarcity mindset trap. your mental trap lures you with the smell of easy money. consumption demands more consumption, which demands more consumption, falsifying the easy aspect.
americans across various the socioeconomic chasm experience advert agencies' desires and dreams envisioned by multinational megacorporations. consume, consume, and consume, or else, you may not feel welcome in your friends' arms...much less your own family's arms.
let us evaluate negative, scarcity driven consumption patterns:
a) your home size aspirations
why desire a 7,000 square foot ranch home when you have a 5,000 square foot ranch home? better yet, why desire a 5,000 square foot one when you can probably manage with 2,500 square feet?
growing up in a 3,750 square foot gated ranch home with a private pool perversely affected my housing expectations. during my childhood, our family moved from a classic neighborhood with lively parks and old homes to a more modern neighborhood. a sterile neighborhood ambiance and cutthroat environment roamed free.
this trend became much more common as grammar school friends began leaving our old neighborhoods in droves after the initial trickle. although my experience remained privileged, you could feel the intense scorn living outside someone's gate. the scorn became more evident throughout my early adult years, which in turn created my own contempt.
...my contempt took years to dissipate away.
after moving out in my early twenties, two 1,500 square foot condominiums made me feel free as a single fellow. the space should have worked for me; however, my overflowing desire kept growing beyond that floor space with my growing family.
moving to a 2,500 square foot detached home with a clubhouse away from the old condominium quietly pushed our maintenance limits. getting fired, laid off, and creating an incredible independent practice stressed not only our household reserves but affected our mental energy. we could have managed with the 1,500 square foot condominium even with one child.
check out this space. how does it make you feel? we do not need as much as space as we think that we need or deserve.
b) your salary aspirations
evaluating your salary aspirations relative to a higher standard of living appears relatively straightforward. you make more money and will remain happier than without your new salary; however, does this scenario always pan out?
moving my work trajectory away from public sector stability to higher private sector earnings appeared straightforward. my move earned me a raise but also ensconced me in a highly destructive corporate ethos with a crappy commute.
experience has shown in hindsight that the decision remained relatively shortsighted considering subtle clues foreshadowing the mayhem:
- the president's office: it remained over 15 times the size of my office. our future conflicting relationship appeared perfectly aligned with our space arrangement. he visually demonstrated to employees and me his favored status, demanding fanatical adherence.
- no windows: my office did not have any windows. his presidential office had an entire window panel the size of my interior walls. similar symbolic logic revealed similar feelings as the president's office size disparity.
- organizational history: the place seemed too perfect during the interview. perhaps the mental institution had let out too many people from the local clinic, but people seemed off in the local community. the president surrounded himself with boys and men that he desired intimately but professed otherwise, making work undesirable.
do not move just for a raise...
c) your personal possession desires
this condition has never particularly made my life difficult. even though we grew up in a privileged environment, our folks came from more humbler origins. thrift passed on in this case.
clear thinking beyond the next 200 years requires strategies unfolding over long periods of time and thrift. over-consumption and largess drag down intergenerational legacy aspirations.
d) green lawn aspirations
when you have 1 billion plus people without clean water, how can you justify watering your lawn in a desert ecosystem? mass affluence deceives social responsibility and negates the individual within the entire context of human good. you cannot remain free or healthy while your overseas brethren perish from war, slavery, and waterborne diseases.
our water issue has remained an intractable issue since humanity moved into the river valleys 10,000 years ago. we retell the story on different stages and in different settings, with similar actors.
how to build love + trust + abundance?
my alma mater tulane university says, "not for one's own but for one's self," on its seal. our motto makes sense expanding your own psyche to the collective conscious and subconscious experience. overconsumption patterns do not fit into our perfectly aligned positive mentality.
why purchase bottled water when you can purchase or lease reverse osmosis? the reserve osmosis water remains consistently more clean than bottled municipal water. plus, you get to meet the fellow who services your home or office reverse osmosis system.
we can achieve love + trust + abundance by uplifting ourselves with education, healthcare, and necessary technological change; however, we cannot build anything in a nasty, brutish zero-sum game environment.
our focus should remain on each other as people and treat people as noble ends in themselves.
