Connection and consumerism

Maggie says:
Fresh from teaching (being taught by?) yet another fabulous class (I'm telling you, my CRP 265 undergrads are downright brilliant), I'm pondering community, connection, and place. The official topic was local economic development, but as tends to be the case with our group, we talked up and down and around and eventually came back to ourselves: how can we make a difference? What can planners do about this? How can we make our communities be everything we want them to be? What do we do when it seems like no one cares anymore, and the battle is too big? What can one person do against an entire culture built on consumerism, profit, and convenience?

For me, the answers are always the same; they're always inside. I carry my values on my sleeve. They make my heart so full it feels like it can burst sometimes, but I know what I believe and I can only operate from that place. I believe in a future of strong communities and connections that are richer than Wal-Mart, heavier than subsidy giveaway packages, and truer than Applebees, our "Neighborhood Bar and Grill." Why fake community, I ask myself, when we still have a chance to save the real thing?

I surround myself with books like Going Local (a must-read, by the way) and How Wal-Mart is Destroying America, yet I don't need them to know what the answers are. The answers are in all of us, they're in those values that make my heart as heavy as it is. One person believing in something is so much more powerful than a group of people believing nothing much. When in doubt, think small. Each connection we make, each time we share a thought or an idea, each time we purchase something conscientiously, each time someone else sees us make a decision with our hearts and not our perceptions of saving money and/or time, we do a little something. And lots of little somethings add up to something pretty big.

Holiday season is upon us, and for me this always represents the paradox of being genuine as a consumer. I adore gift-giving, but there's a delicate balance between being generous and partaking in the mass rush to buy something, anything, to put under the tree. I want us to be better balancers. I want us to make sure that our everyday choices are represented in our holiday choices. I want us to remember that these holidays are about people and personal connections, and I want us to savor every moment of being with loved ones and being in a moment of memory.

In class today we handed back grades for a recent project. I get all touch-feely in my write-ups, giving them a page on everything I liked about what they did and offhand things they inspire me to ponder. One group today received this line: "You guys actually like people, and it shows." How simple is that: do you like people or not? Because if you genuinely do, then everything you attempt will be softer, kinder, more intimate, more human. And if you don't, well... isn't that how we ended up with so many impersonal boxes surrounded by seas of asphalt, surrounded by isolated subdivisions where people drive into garages and lock their doors behind them? How did things get so bad, if not for the fact that we stopped liking each other as much as we once did?

This Thanksgiving, this Christmas, I want to focus on how much I like people, how much I love my friends and family, how much I love feeling good about goodness, and how recognizing and praising small community victories makes me better equipped to lash out in outrage and action against all that's so wrong. I want to be still with how much I like people, and then let that simple fact wash over me and help influence everything I try to do in this time when more than ever, we need people who are just willing to try.