Living a More Intentional Life
Last night and again this morning, I snapped out of the preoccupations of my day to discover that I was brushing my teeth. Here’s a little insight into my personality: it’s a good thing I always do things like brush my teeth in the same way every time, or I probably would have started over again with parts I’d already brushed, and become preoccupied again. I might still be there now, were it not for the extreme ritualistic approach I take to these things.
Later this morning, over breakfast, Emily mentioned a blog she’d discovered where the author and her family were trying to live for a year without making any unnecessary purchases. Apparently, she talked at length about the things they’d taken to Goodwill that had been sitting in boxes for 15 years, and how it had made her realize the junk quality of the items in many of the stores we flock to. This is all paraphrasing, of course.
That conversation, in turn, reminded me of the book I’m just finishing: Big Box Swindle. In it, the author points out a flaw in Wal-Mart’s message of value. If an item from Wal-Mart costs half as much as an apparently comparable item from another, smaller shop, but that item only lasts a quarter as long before it has to be replaced, then it’s not a better value. Obviously, it’s hard to tell what the lifespan of something on Wal-Mart’s shelves is going to be - a fact not discouraged by Wal-Mart or its suppliers, I’m sure - which leaves us with nothing more than marketing for guidance.
But I don’t want to get too distracted by these ideas of value and quality. Big Box Swindle, along with other books I’ve read recently, the blog post I mentioned above, and my recent experience with brushing my teeth, all make me wonder about something else. Can we choose to live a more intentional life? This is a cornerstone of Buddhism, that we should strive to experience life in the eternal present, and not get caught up in worrying about the past or planning the future. But I think it also has some really profoundly interesting implications for practical, daily life.
Imagine actually thinking about that extra goody at the grocery store before it lands in your cart. Or the pretty table at Ikea that, if you bought it, would replace the table already at home. Or the new Macbook Air that would only replace the perfectly operable Macbook Pro you already have…but OOOH! It’s so shiny and thin! I think too often we geek out and get lost in the neat factor of the gadgetry around us. When this happens, we get confused between things we think are really nice in some way - they taste good, or maybe they’re faster, better, lighter, prettier, or whatever than the thing we already have. We end up confusing things we want for things we need. I can definitely attest to this; when I see something like a Macbook Air, a new voice starts up in my head, telling me all the things I could do with that little silver slice of heaven that my clunky, metallic box of a Macbook Pro cannot do. Too often in the past, I’ve listened to that voice of justification, and caved to the desire for shiny new things that cause me to donate or otherwise throw “away” the perfectly serviceable item I already own. While on the face of it donating this sort of stuff may seem generous, it’s really just a novel definition of “away”, with the act of donating being the final step in the acquisition of unnecessary things (if they were necessary, the replaced item probably wouldn’t be in any shape to be reused). It’s less “here, I’d like to help you, you look like you could use this” and more “here, you get rid of this”.
When you wake up to why you’re buying things, the next thing to follow must be waking up to where and what you’re buying. What impact do I have on the world around me when I make a choice about where I buy the specific product that I have in mind? This is the main part of the concern voiced in Big Box Swindle, Going Local, and The Wal-Mart Effect, among others. If I need to buy lettuce for dinner, what difference does it make whether I buy it from Wal-Mart or a local farmer’s market? Okay, that one may be colored with all sorts of ideas about value (quantity of food per price) or quality (nutrition of the food)…we don’t even have to wade that far into conscientious shopping.
What about the allergy medicine I buy? What difference is there between Walgreens (or Wal-Mart, for an even starker contrast) and the local pharmacy (a place called Wise’s)? It’s definitely not as convenient to shop at Wise’s, since they’re in town and we live in the suburbs. Wise’s isn’t open when I most commonly realize I’m out of allergy medicine - usually at 9:30 at night or so. Wise’s doesn’t have the ability to fill my prescription from anywhere on Earth or the moon. But let’s really think about this decision for a second, rather than being led around by the nose by all the marketing executives and corporate managers armed with powerful psychological tools and fancy packaging for their products. If I’m acting like a member of a community, I care that my pharmacist has to be at work at 10:00 at night…not a fate I’d wish on anyone, really…certainly not someone who may have a family to go home to. They’re not as close to my house as the Walgreen’s down the street, but then again, I drive by Wise’s at least twice a week. So, it shouldn’t be too difficult to plan stops at the pharmacy into my weekly routine. Finally, every time I leave town, the first thing I think about is whether I’m likely to have allergy problems (yeah, they’re that much of a problem these days). So it seems like the national Walgreen’s prescription database isn’t really that much of a benefit to me. I’ve never actually used it, though Emily has, once.
On the other side of the balance, let’s look at why I might prefer Wise’s over Walgreen’s. It’s sort of funny to think about, since I grew up going to a local pharmacy called Miller’s in Bonner Springs, KS. When I have an ailment, I find that I’m pretty much on my own. If I think it’s unlikely to resolve itself, I go to a doctor. Any other time, I roam the aisles of Walgreen’s or Publix (grocery store) looking for a box advertising the closest match to the symptoms I have. I have no idea why sometimes I find that Alka-Seltzer Cold works best, and other times Tylenol Cold works better. At times, I’ve even found myself scouring the internet for help (Emily even goes to books to help diagnose herself and me). After reading the section on pharmacies in Big Box Swindle, I remembered where we used to go for this help when I was young: Mr. Wheeler, at Miller’s Pharmacy. Pharmacists go to school for about as long as medical doctors, and it’s not for nothing. These people are a repository for a depth of information that the rest of us would probably find arcane and mysterious…and they can give pretty good advice about which medicines, and what doses, are likely to help fix us up. Their abilities improve exponentially on this topic when they know more about our history with different ailments and medicines. Walgreen's pharmacists could do this, if their managers would allow them to dedicate the time to their customers necessary for this sort of advice. Unfortunately, that advice doesn't hit the bottom line directly, so it's seen by most chain stores as a waste of time. Big Box Swindle actually makes an interesting point here: local pharmacies provide, on average, far superior service to that provided by Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s or Wal-whatever. On average, they’re faster, cheaper, and provide such good advice that they can actually reduce our dependence on doctor visits to solve our health problems. These are benefits that are much more relevant to my own life than the ability to refill my Allegra from Mars.
Aside from the service argument, what about being part of the community? Both pharmacists - the one at Walgreen’s and the guy at Wise’s - will probably live in town. However, the local ownership of Wise’s also means that some of the money I spend on Claritin or Tylenol will be spent on other businesses, in addition to paying the salary for the pharmacist. The other businesses might include the newspaper, radio stations, and cable company, for advertising; or a local contractor, to repair the roof; or even a local accountant - my mom’s profession - to help calculate taxes and payroll. Wise’s also pays taxes that may well have been excused for the chain stores. Buying from Wise’s helps reinforce the fabric that holds us all together and helps a community thrive…it helps us be more able to cope with our own community issues, like managing unemployment levels or providing emergency services.
If we wake up and pay attention to what we’re doing when we go shopping, we can make a huge difference in our own quality of life without spending more. We don’t have to be mindless consumers, focusing on the wrong attributes - like how shiny and new-looking something is, rather than how well it does its job - when we do pay attention. Emily and I have been trying this out lately, and it sounds like more and more other people are, too…but it takes a lot of practice, re-examining the daily decisions we used to make out of habit. It’s going to take a lot of work to wake up, unfortunately. We’ve been sleepwalking for a long time now.
UPDATE: That blog I mentioned? It can be found here.