Dear reader from the future,
How do you celebrate birthdays?
Is buying stuff for gifts still a thing?
Maybe after listening to many episodes of The Minimalists and reading The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here, I think about all the stuff I have accumulated over my lifetime. It includes items I have given to other people, which have added to their clutter.
One time, when I was at the department store, I thought about the abundance of clothing items, and toys, and appliances waiting for their forever home, at least before they hit the trash. I thought about how the market has become the gatekeeper for everyone to access many things—you can only have what you can buy. It now feels that my love, my celebration of someone, gets translated into a price tag. What if I couldn’t afford the expensive ones? Does that mean I love them less?
Perhaps, if we keep giving children stuff, we give them the impression that to be happy one must accumulate more.
And how much more should we have before we get satisfied?
Your letter writer from the past,
Jessa
jessa 