Being Cheap
In March 1987 Monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a little book (the latest on Amazon is 115 pages and only 5.8 onces) called Being Peace. The main idea of the book is that instead of violently fighting for peace in angry peace demonstrations, people should simply find peace within themselves. It would then pass on like a virus. Similar to Ghandi’s message of "You must be the change you want to see in the world" – the peace of one willful person could perhaps create a chaos-theory like effect that resonates around the earth.
So – as a daily meditator, and secular spiritual seeker, I practice "being peace" in my daily life with varying degrees of success. Even though I read the book years ago, I still think of the concept all the time. Of being what you want the world to be, instead of demanding from the world the things that you want. Even though I am wording it a bit aggressively, think about it – people do it all the time. Imagine living your life in this framework: I want respect. Be respect. I want happiness. Be happiness. I want love. Be love. I want the world to be at peace. Be peace.
Now, I am trying to save for a decent down-payment on a mortgage while running my little marketing start-up. So – on top of being happy, being respectful, being peace etc. etc., I have to also practice being cheap. For example, tonight I made my own bread crumbs for my chicken dish with my bare hands instead of buying them from the store. This is amazing both because I am not going to a restaurant for my chicken and because I am thinking about the cost of ingredients. Being cheap in a lot of ways is being the change that I want to see in the world – since it is consuming less is environmentally sound.
Tonight I went out for tea – which was the most frugal thing I could think of. And – on the way I looked at all of the stores and restaurants – all begging for me to buy something – magazines, candies, drinks etc. etc. I looked at all of the chocolate things at the Starbucks asking to be bought. The chic brown boot and hat combination a woman was wearing were giving me clothes shopping ideas. People in warm restaurants eating fine foods and in bars sharing drinks, made me want the same. Day-dreams of the cute red car I want right now instead of my dented black VW were hard to suppress.
The flowers on the sidewalk outside of the store were beckoning me with their beauty – and dammit, I failed my little cheap mission and ended up getting some beautiful pink tulips to brighten up the apt – but $4.99 plus taxes isn’t bad compared to the car I am lusting after. I am understanding more and more about why people call shopping an addiction – one our whole city, country or even world is hooked on but no government wants to hold us back because consumer spending is so important to the economy. Well, maybe they want to hold us back if we are defaulting on our mortgage… or going bankrupt – but that is still the exception (I hope).
Yes, it is hard to be cheap in Toronto, the heart of Canada’s consumer economy – and I am sure it is the same in cities across the world. But if more of us practiced a bit of being cheap and stopped buying all that deliciously sexily attractive but unneeded stuff and gave the extra to loved-ones, investments, charity, the future, more free time, new creations etc… it could make quite a difference in the environment… and in lives.
So I guess now is a good time for me to sell my shares in Starbucks and h and m
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If you’re serious, you can make that chicken provide three times as many meals by keeping its carcass (bones, skin, fat, gristle) and making two batches of soup out of ‘em with some sauteed onions, celery and carrots for pennies.
As for the fine foods in restaurants, there is plenty of food so fine that no restaurant can afford to offer it on the menu — inexpensive in ingredients but expensive in hired labour by the hour. The home cook’s reward for their labour, however, is the meal itself, so never undervalue home cooking relative to restaurant food. (These are called “mom dishes” since the love of a mother can be one of the only things motivating a cook to start preparing a meal the day before it’s going to be eaten
T – yes – I have been a one-woman army propping up Starbucks for far too long!
Rowan – you are right about the mom-dishes, and actually my mum is one of the best savers I have ever known (she did well despite raising three kids on her own). After this weekend, easter turkey soup
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Amen to that.
Wonderful post and thoughts–lotsa “stuff” to think about, lol! I recently had to drastically downsize and ya know what? I don’t miss any of the stuff I was lugging around (and some of it for more than a decade). I will never “load up” again with “stuff.”