Getting Energy and Meditation on a Coke Can
I’ve had no energy lately. In fact, I have gone to bed before 9:30 for three nights in a row now. Like with most problems, I have been throwing product at it. I’ve been drinking and drinking teas and lattes bought in clean paper cups, eating lots of dark greens from hard plastic containers from my work cafeteria and restaurants. Last night I had a brand new hamburger made fresh for me and placed in a little paper bag. Maybe I just haven’t been eating enough iron and protein? This morning I have been researching diet and exercise books and my friend was even suggesting some pharmaceutical remedies through the phone last night as I drifted away. But it’s just tired… that’s all.
This morning feels great. I don’t know if it had to do with all of the products, or if it had to do with me needing a few nights of good sleep because I was severely sleep deprived. I have been flying in and out of the province this week after all.
But, I do think that us kids who grew up watching hours and hours of TV get used to thinking that products can be the answer to our problems. Are you bored? Buy our toys and cereals. Are you not cool? Buy these CDs (I’m dating myself, I know) and clothes. And later… Are you lonely? Look prettier with these products and skinnier with our diet recommendations and you’ll attract all the people you want. Are you sad? Buy these pharmaceuticals. Yes, the ad appeals are much more sophisticated than that, but the messages can be distilled down to these points. Marketers know (me being one of them): find the pain point and present your product as a solution.
But, after all of this buying of shiny new things… are we really any happier or is it just an illusion? Also, can our environment sustain more and more people frantically buying in order to be happier? An article in Urban Dharma called "Meditation on a Coke Can" says the following:
Our desire to gain more happiness through having more people consuming more products and services inevitability must lead to less happiness because of an environment that can not support the demands being made on it. It is only through abandoning the illusory happiness of the current consumer culture—a culture that ignores the inherent complexity of a single can of soda–that humans can come into a stable and sustainable web of interrelationships with their environment.
Now, obviously I am not hating on the consumer marketers who made the TV ads mentioned above. They are just doing their job, making their bonuses and making the companies they work for more profitable… also potentially creating new jobs and wealth for a whole host of people including investors and retailers. They are also footing the bill for whatever free entertainment I was enjoying as a kid, paying the salary for the actors, producers and writers of the shows.
But, I do think there is a lot of room for individual critical thought around products being solutions. Next time I’m tired, I’ll take more walks, warm baths and hit the pillow sooner. Much more sustainable, and much less frantic.
I may be flying off in a different direction with the following, but if you stick with me I think there’s a connection.
There is a process advocated in one or more books (“Your Money or Your Life,” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, comes to mind) where one considers the true cost of acquiring things. The process involves looking at ones income and considering how many hours of ones life is put into earning the income. $800 per week of income over 40 hours of work would be $20 per hour. Simple? Not so much.
How much time is spent getting to work? Time spent shopping for clothes that wouldn’t be purchased except for work? Time spent flopped in front of a television after work, too exhausted for a more meaningful activity? Each of these and a host of other work-related activities should be added to the 40 hours actually at work. They are part of your work week.
Then there’s the *cost* of commuting to work, the cost of the work clothes and the cost of other little and not-so-little purchases that are work related. All those costs should be deducted from the money earned because they are a price paid to earn the income. And I haven’t even considered the effect of taxes, which is substantial.
So… at the end of the week one might just find that instead of earning the $20 per hour that we thought we were, we are actually earning much less than half of that (seriously – do the math).
So when we are purchasing “products” (whatever those might be, from pharmaceutical cures to get-away vacations) we need to actually work a lot more than we thought we did in order to pay for them. In other words, we must give up a lot of ourselves. The question is, is it worth the effort?
All that said to say this. Maybe more of the long walks, early bedtimes, warm baths or similar experiences that are relatively inexpensive, would free up time to not be at work, which might just allow us more time for long walks, talking with friends, reading books, giving…
In short (ok, too late for that – sorry), maybe it’s all about learning what we don’t need and learning not to expend our limited energy acquiring those things, and focusing instead on the numerous enjoyable things that, quite often, have very little cost but substantial reward.