Searching in the Dust

In light of our recent Good Housekeeping Article I thought I would elaborate on our purchase-free year in a way that a short article does not permit. Here are a few thoughts on why we undertook this crazy experiment in the first place.


Searching in the Dust

I recently found a Persian story about a quirky sage named Mulla Nasrudin. One day he was kneeling on the ground, carefully inspecting the dust. His vigilance caused a young man who was passing by to stop and ask, “What are you doing?”

“I have lost the key to a great treasure and am trying to find it here,” Mulla replied.

“A great treasure?!” exclaimed the man. “Let me help you search for it.”

A woman passed on her way to market. Seeing two men crawling around in the dust, she asked, “What are you doing?”

The man replied, “We are searching for the key to a great treasure. It has been lost. I am helping this sage find it.”

“A great treasure!” exclaimed the woman. “Let me help you search for the key too.”

A large caravan came along. The head camel driver stopped and, seeing three people crawling around in the dust, inquired, “Why are you crawling on the ground?”

The woman replied, “We are searching for the key to a great treasure. It has been lost, and I am helping this sage and this man find it.”

“A great treasure!” exclaimed the camel driver. Like the others he thought, “Perhaps when it is found we can share it!” He invited everyone in the caravan to help. “Let us all assist you in this important task!”

A large crowd now crawled around in the dust, looking for the key. After a long while of unsuccessful searching, a young boy asked Mulla Nasrudin, “Are you certain that you dropped the key right here?”

Mulla stopped poking in the dust and replied, “No. I lost the key somewhere inside my house.”

The crowd stopped searching, stood up and asked, “Then why are we wasting our time looking for it outside?”

“This is an excellent question!” Mulla replied. “Your insight is clear! It is too dark to look for the key in my house. There is far more light out here.

~

We, as a family, were also searching in the dust. Or, since we lived in Portland, Oregon – the mud, which on this particular occasion, in December of 2001, was accompanied by freezing rain, of the sideways, in-your-face variety. We had been traipsing around in it for a half hour searching for a Christmas tree.

My husband Tim is nothing if not committed, and he was not about to give up on his annual quest for “the perfect tree.” This was the third U-Cut Christmas tree farm we had scoured that day, and Tim was the only participant who still seemed up for the challenge. Our eldest daughter Jenna (then 9 years old), our middle daughter Sage (then 6), and I were shuffling along pressed together in a penguin like huddle. In desperation, one of us would point to a random tree near us and shout through the onslaught of stabbing precipitation, “Hey, what about this one?” Tim would do his best to pretend he was considering a clearly unsuitable selection and then condemn it with one of the following: too skinny; too short; too dense; not dense enough; too weak (to hold a heavy ornament); not vibrant enough; too crooked at the top (to hold the star); too patchy; and the catch-all criticism: not quite right. Then he would throw us a quick, conciliatory smile and the shuffling would begin again.

Periodically we would come into view of Tim’s father’s black Lincoln, which hummed away on the side of the road awaiting our return. Since the windows were fogged by the beckoning heat, I could only barely make out the forms of the occupants, but I knew the rising tide of desperation was filling the car as well. Tim’s father, who was fighting a nasty cold, sat in the driver’s seat while our ever-active youngest daughter, Laugan, flung herself from the back seat to the front in a tireless stream of three-year-old euphoria. At least someone was having a good time.

I will spare you the details of the expletive I used when we finally arrived at the chosen tree, and of the dirty diaper fiasco that ensued upon our return to the car. Suffice it to say, that at some point in our ardent quest for holiday glory, we had begun looking in the wrong place.

Our ill-fated searching was not, however, limited to the holidays. Like everyone else, we seemed in constant pursuit of the illusive idea of happiness, which increasingly revolved around buying just that right thing: the right curtains, the right clothes, the right CD, the right television set, the right car, etc. If we succeeded, then wouldn’t it follow that we would have just the right life?

While joy and happiness swirled sporadically around our family, our success at procuring it seemed rather haphazard. Even at times, in pursuit of this rightness, the feeling was so terribly wrong that I would wonder how we had arrived at this place. Why was I cursing at Christmas trees? How could a family with the best of intentions go so astray? There must be a better way and I was desperate to find it.

Little did I know that “it” would find me, and soon our family would embark on what would prove to be a truly life-altering experiment: an entire year without purchasing. Over the course of a year, our crazy adventure would reveal the key to a more appealing and valuable treasure than we ever could have purchased.

Remembering How to Live

Now that the economy seems to be pushing the covers aside and venturing from its sick bed, we may find our economic worries easing up and giving way to a golden opportunity: a chance to consider what we have learned. When Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez wrote the book "Your Money or Your Life" Vicki's grandmother thought no one would buy it because "everyone already knows this". What she didn't realize (but the soon-to-be uber successful authors did) was that in two generations traditional wisdom can slip through our fingertips as easily as a credit card through a machine. Startling as this economic alarm has been, it has successfully jolted most of us out of our cultural amnesia and given us a moment of clarity to rediscover who we really are and what truly makes us happy. So what had we forgotten?

Little things, of course, like how incredible it feels to actually fix something yourself. In my grandparents generation it was a daily occurance to see someone prying open an oven, or a radio or a clock to see what had made it stop functioning. People in my generation might think someone had lost their minds if they started cracking open their appliances but it is quite surprising how easily many things can be fixed. My teenage daughter Jenna and I have had incredible success fixing our DVD player for years by simply unscrewing the billion little screws that hold the top in place and cleaning the lense which reads the DVD's. Not everything can be fixed by an amateur but the feelings of empowerment and creativity which come from attempting these repairs are so delightful and profound that even failures seem well worth the effort. And what about those things that aren't made to be repaired, like most electronics today? Our grandparents would never have put up with being sold such garbage, but in the blur of our fast-paced lives we've forgotten what to insist on. How about electronics which come with repair manuals and a number for ordering parts? Now that would be a product worthy of our hard-earned cash.
We had forgotten some big stuff too. Like the whole idea that money and things cannot actually bring you lasting happiness, but health and relationships can. We all think we know this, but then why have we become a nation of where neighbors rarely stop by for a chat, vacation time is shrinking, and mall time increasing?
The great news is we have been given that proverbial second chance to get it right. Since the rat race has been temporarily called for lack of funds, we get an opportunity to poke our heads up and see what lies outside the confines of the racetrack. How had we forgotten that beyond the asphalt is a lush, verdant and juicy existance? All we need now is to give up on all of those perceived prizes for some good old fashioned living. Remember?