The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [82]
As I unburdened myself that summer, I felt lighthearted. Now, as you can probably tell, there was some spiritual pride involved. (Spiritual pride is when you think, Look how holy I am.) But the joy had less to do with pride and more with the newfound feeling of being less burdened and more open to God.
Of course, I had to bring some things to the novitiate: I didn’t appear naked at the front door. The day after “the call,” the novice director phoned with a list of what items to pack: enough underwear and clothes for two years, a black clerical shirt, black pants, black shoes, and a few books if I wished. So it would be false to say that I gave away everything.
But the novitiate was a dramatically simpler lifestyle than the one I had been leading. Moving in with just a few clothes and a few books felt, well, simple. It’s similar to what you may feel when you go on vacation with just one or two suitcases. You find yourself surprised that you can live with so little. You think, Why can’t I live like this all the time? (As David would say, “Pay attention to that feeling.”)
Few people can, or want to, live like members of a religious order. You have to clothe yourself, house yourself, and probably need a car to drive to work. If you have children, you need even more in order to care for and nurture them. The point is not that you have to give everything away, but this: the more you stop buying stuff you don’t need, and the more you get rid of items you don’t use, the more you can simplify your life. And the more you simplify, the freer you will feel, and be.
There are a few reasons for this.
First, possessions cost not only money but time. Consider the time you spend worrying about what you wear. You have to think about it, shop for it, buy it, clean it, repair it, store it, replace it. The same goes for your house, your car, your furniture, your television, your appliances, your computer, and your other electronic gadgets. The less you decide to buy, the more time you have for the things that matter more.
The second reason is less obvious. Our consumerist culture runs on comparisons. When I was working at General Electric, we employees were often told that clothes were an important part of our careers. “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have,” my manager said. “Spend one week’s salary on your shoes,” said a friend. “Never wear a patterned tie with a patterned shirt,” said a consultant at our annual Dress for Success seminar. The time spent comparing my wardrobe to those of my managers was considerable. So was the time spent comparing cars, apartments, furniture, and stereos. The less you buy, the less time you will spend comparing your stuff to your neighbor’s stuff.
While visiting my sister and her family recently, I wore an old plaid short-sleeve shirt. My nine-year-old nephew said, “Uncle Jim, that shirt was twenty years out of fashion twenty years ago!” I laughed and asked him where he had got that expression. He said he heard it on a cartoon. The impulse to buy, possess, and compare is inculcated early.
Third, the more things that society produces, the more we will want, or be encouraged to want, and the more unhappy we will be. In his book The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook sums it up nicely: “As ever more material things become available and fail to make us happy, material abundance may even have the perverse effect of instilling unhappiness—because it will never be possible to have everything that economics can create.” Freeing yourself from the need to have more and more means that you may, paradoxically, be more satisfied.
Unrelieved Competition
John Kavanaugh, a Jesuit moral theologian who writes frequently on questions of the consumerist culture, has this to say about the corrosive impact it has on us