Day 13: I'm a hack!

Best lawns in the county!

First of all, I'm a hack. There is a book out that I just was alerted to called, wait for it... "Consumer Detox: Less Stuff. More Life." It's by Mark Powley.

I obviously used an Audible credit to get it. I'll start listening to it tomorrow. It seems I'm not the only one thinking about this.

There are some important points to this that I have been discovering as time goes by. First, it is really hard to isolate yourself from a consumerist lifestyle in the country. I'm not just talking about the stuff that you have to consume like food and clothes and energy. The wealth that we experience in this country makes virtually everything accessible. Second, the way that we prioritize how we spend our wealth has a lot to do with how much money we make and how hard we have to work for that money. Finally, just because we prioritize the right things doesn't mean we aren't susceptible to the traps that our multimillion dollar marketing industry sets for us to spend unnecessarily.

As I write this I'm sitting in a beautiful custom soccer field watching my son play for an elite soccer club. He is learning absolutely amazing skills and strategy that I would have never had access to when I was a kid. This is partly because of how expensive this program is. Now I'm not trying to brag about him, the cost or the great wealth of coaching talent we have in California. If anything, I have this small shred of gilt over the fact that I'm spending this kind of money on this. It's actually not as expensive as other regional programs, so we really are getting a good bang for our buck, but there are also cheaper programs with pretty good professional coaching.

This is absolutely a luxury. From the very beginning I've thought about how his learning to play soccer at this level so young may be useful in the future for him and also how he might use this skill to glorify Jesus in his life. I'm not taking about Tom Tebow-like religious athleticism, I'm thinking about how he might someday use his talent and training to coach other kids positively and mentor them in a Christ honoring way.

Is this really a necessity? No.

But should I take him out of this and spend the money on something else? That's a harder question to answer.

This is the kind of mindfulness about my consumerism that has been inspired by my trips to Haiti and personal exploration into what drives my spending.

I'll pass on any good tidbits I get from the Consumer Detox book. Thanks for following along with me in this experiment.