A True Black Friday…
The news that the Black Friday shopping phenomenon – never one of our favorite news topics to begin with, given where we’ve chosen to live – went awry this year is a shocker. But also an opening for some serious thought about who we’ve become as a nation, and as a society. As well as about what this time of year should mean to us all.
Last week, we all gathered to share meals and, hopefully, give thanks for all we’ve gained over the past year. This coming month, we build towards the various holidays of light, when we celebrate communality, the promise of renewal, the beauty of birth, the miracle of humanly keeping on, no matter the obstacles.
But now we must contemplate how far our sense of ownership, of acquisitiveness, of getting and having and keeping and coveting has gotten us. Trampling people to death to get a Made-in-China sales item? Releasing anger and frustration in a flurry of bullets in a toy store?
The fact that our economy has entered rocky times should not force us all into a dog-eat-dog stance, and yet so much of what we’ve been taught in recent years has trumpeted competition and cut-throat measures over cooperation. Remember the Freedom Fries silliness? Or the suggestion that shopping was patriotic?
Most of us know how difficult times can make us better. We rise to an occasion by becoming better people, and not getting mean.
Let’s look at our current time in history as an opportunity, and look back at history at the ways in which we all grew as a people after the Civil War, the Depression, and the raucous battles of the 1960s. Let’s stop lambasting Europe and Asia and look at how they’ve bettered themselves, and the rest of the world, following the cataclysms of the last century.
We have new leadership. We can become better people by trimming our need to buy, our constant worries about economics.
If one shops locally, you know where your money goes. And you’ll never fear for your lives.
If you give what you make, and keep the spirit of holidays alive, what one can or can’t purchase becomes less important
We live up here for a reason. As we also love this season…
Remember Pearl Harbor. But also don’t forget International Human Rights Day.
Our challenges make us real.
PS