Learning to live without is good for Americans, but catastrophic for America
There is no debate that our grandparents were right: Not only can we not take it with us, but it turns out that the stuff they were talking about we don’t need.
The electric screwdriver, the $20 run through Target that ends up costing $120, and latest shirt to add to my already-full closet.
We are stuck in the social media post, “This year I plan to ‘collect’ less stuff and go on more adventures.” The adventure clause of this hipster slogan isn’t a climb up Everest but is now a trip to the grocery store.
Look in your closet, garage or drawers and you can add this sort of pledge/slogan to your list of “Failed New Year’s Resolutions.” No judgment; I used this $200 beer making kit once, which is now preserved in layers of dust.
We have no choice. We are in a time when stuff collecting is no longer an option.
Because God has a sense of humor, we also reside in the amusing paradox that if we don’t load up on what we don’t need, our country is in serious trouble.
We either buy the $5 coffee, the $50 T-shirt and the $500 Golden Goose Sneakers, and all of the rest of our accepted gouges dressed as capitalism, or our home will remain in this crisis.
That or the next red and blue, pork-bellied stimulus package will be $20.2 trillion.
We face at least another month of coronavirus isolation partying, and now we have all settled into our reluctant routines.
As a result of staying in, half of America will die from obesity. The other half will qualify for the Olympics — now next summer — or the Tour de France. Our dogs should be expected to win the Iditarod.
Middle America has never walked this much in their lives. We have stocked up for nuclear winter, while ordering carry-out from our local restaurants.
We are living a real-time global experiment, and the highs of being a lab rat.
The results are scary. We’re learning most of what we “need” is actually junk. The only thing we need is health. The rest is excess.
It’s one thing to know it, and another to live it.
The coronavirus gives us no alternative.
We miss dropping our kids off at school, going to the gym, hanging out at a happy hour or running to the store for whatever we “need,” whenever we want.
America is always open 24/7. Now that it’s closed doesn’t mean we are.
Kids can learn at home.
Employers everywhere are learning their employees don’t even need to come into work to work.
We can exercise in the living room, driveway, run, or bike.
We don’t need to eat as much as we want.
We can have a happy hour on our porch.
We can cook for ourselves.
We can make our own coffee.
We can take care of our own house.
The old car is fine.
The wardrobe is big enough.
A game of Monopoly, Scrabble, or watching a movie can suffice. Reading the book you always wanted to finish creates a sense of accomplishment.
These are all of the measures and actions the responsible financial types will tell you, repeatedly, we should do. We are shamed if/when we purchase excessively, beyond our means.
And now that we cannot buy excessively for our lives, our home is a disaster. Our home is built on purchasing and consuming what we don’t need.
“When this is all over,” there will be a return to our previous behaviors, with an adjustment.
We were due for a market correction.
The coronavirus will one day be a case study in history books, and illustrate Americans are actually fine living without, but America would die if they actually did.
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