A Few More Words on Consumption
A few final words (for now) on the economics of knitting and yarn acquistion. This topic really raised some interesting and thought-provoking discussion in the comments. I have found myself over the last couple of weeks paying a lot of attention to people’s discussions of their stash, their knitting-related purchases and how they feel about them. Then, yesterday, I happened to come across Etherknitter (How have I missed this blog before?). In a discussion of her own purchasing behaviors and the “seduction” that happens when you fall in love with yet another yarn and have to bring it home, she observed,
“How we stash reflects our inner selves, our emotional barometers, and how we soothe ourselves when we respond to pain AND pleasure.”
I think that about sums it up. I know I have a tendency to rail on about mindless consumption, but I’m not trying to just be a big meany who wants to ruin everyone’s yarn fun. Let me state clearly, these are my own barometers, for me. I know that when I mindlessly consume and purchase items out of a sense of emptiness or anxiety or any other emotional space, I am ignoring what is going on with me. I am silencing her voice and trying to buy her things instead of listening to what she has to say. I am bribing her like a child — “If you’ll just be good for mommy, I’ll give you this yarn treat…” Only it never really makes her happy and she doesn’t feel validated, just plied. And that is disrespectful.
This morning I had a very long and involved dream about grocery shopping with my mother. I woke up feeling very tense and sad. Shopping and/or spending money with my mother usually puts me on edge. When I was growing up, we were in pretty dire straights financially. She struggled just to make ends meet and was very much unable to give me much of anything. I have so much appreciation and respect for having grown up in an environment where I did not just get whatever I wanted (as so many of the people around me did), even if I didn’t always understand it at the time. I have tried to impart my gratitude to her throughout the years, but it seems like she lives behind this wall of guilt and what I say never quite makes it through.
Now that she has the means, she tries to make up for the past with lots of compulsive spending and elaborate gifts. She seems to be trying to soothe two little girls — her own and the one she imagines is me. I haven’t always known how to deal with her generosity, because there is part of me that reaches out and latches onto all those bright and shiney baubles. There is a part of me that is so grateful to have a parent who I can rely on and occassionally be a little spoiled by. And then there is a part of me that wants to reject those gifts and reassure her that she doesn’t need to buy me things to be worthy of my love. I guess this is the adult Rachel who wants her mother to feel satisfied and ok. It’s very complicated.
When I woke up today, I realized that I need to develop a different relationship with my mom and money. I don’t know what that means yet, but I do know that more than anything I want to be respectful of her. So, we’ll see where that goes.
All this made me realize why it that I find my meager stash so uninspiring at the moment. I believe it is because most of my purchases were made out of a sense of emptiness and anxiety and were bought without purpose. I wanted to feel better and so I bought something. We tell ourselves things like, “But I deserve it!” and really what do we deserve? Don’t we deserve to find out what is going on with ourselves. “Why am I buying this?” It is the one question that stops me every time. Even more than “Do I need this?”
The Etherknitter said that what was more telling to her than anything were the emotions involved when she chose not to bring something home. Hmmm…
January 19th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
The Etherknitter is a very wise and thoughtful woman - a constant examiner. I caught myself on the verge - no, after the verge, but I could still cancel - of making a VERY expensive purchase of something I absolutely did not need the other day and realized that it was a sign of something else – as it usually is.
Sometimes if I’m caught up in acquisition I make myself walk away. If I’m still thinking about something 24 hours later then I know it is speaking to me, rather than being something I am trying to numb myself with.
Sometimes I make a mistake - and if so I will return, and if returning is not possible, pass on to someone else the item in question. And try to be wiser, more tuned in next time. As with everything else, the pendulum swings.
And listening to your feelings instead of the clamour for gratification does get easier the more you do it.
January 19th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
There is a great passage in a book called Feed by M.T. Anderson in which one of the characters (who happens to live in a very frighteningly familiar culture of consumerism gone awry) talks about her strategy for delaying gratification as a means of really appreciating what she does buy (which is a bit of a simplification, because I think she does it to feel alive and to feel in charge and not to feel like a cog in the system, but I digress…). It had this very ritualistic feel to it and was so ripe with the enjoyment of the thing. I like buying something when I really want it. When it is really something I will use or need or enjoy. Buying without a purpose is depressing and never makes me feel like I imagine it will.
I went in to Target the other day to pick up a few things. It has been a long time since I really entered a Target to shop. It was so disappointing. Everything looked cheap and dull. There was nothing I wanted. My sweetie and I were talking about it after we left and we just realized that so much has changed for us this year. We thought we had pared down to the basics, and then with the unexpected unemployment we learned what basics really were. What a gift. I faced myself in ways that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And you are right, it has just gotten easier and easier and easier…
January 20th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I just joined the “Buy More Yarn” KAL, so you know where I’m coming from.
Mostly because the guilt part of the whole thing is not something I want to feed into. But I hear you. And I’ve spent some time thinking about my own stashing behavior. I find that I sometimes buy yarn when I’m feeling low–I suppose there are worse things to do, but it’s not the *best* thing either. I also stash yarn and queue projects because I’m yearning for the time and mental space to be creative, and that is often missing in my life. It’s not the best approach to solving that problem, since I use my time to work to make money to buy the yarn and equipment for the projects I don’t have time to complete…because I’m working…but right now my work choices are such that more money than time is the right thing, however much I might not like it. So I stash, and I squeeze the projects in around the edges. And I figure, as someone told me in my comments once, if I’m actually using and producing FOs with a lot of what I buy and/or stash, well, that’s something.
I’m going with that.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
This is exactly the conversation I had with my mom just before Christmas! She was trying to figure out why she hates Christmas so much, and a big piece of it was because she always felt stressed about not having any money to get us kids nice presents when we were little. She said she STILL feels like she can never give us enough, even though we’re all in our thirties and forties and have families of our own. I told her that first of all, the intangible things she did give us (a warm, happy home life and the absolute, rock-bottom assurance that our mom loved and supported us no matter WHAT—and let me tell you, the three of us have put it to the test time and again!) were worth so much more than any plastic thing she could have bought and wrapped up.
Second, it’s not a good thing to get every last little thing your heart desires; it’s good to face the little disappoints and get used to them, before Life starts dishing out the whopping great disappointments. I see kids these days—including in my own family—who get everything, instantly, and it seems to me they’re burning through their capacity for joy at an astounding rate. And once that gets used up, once you’re jaded, I don’t think you get that back. And then what pleasure is there in the world? Me, I’m glad to be in my mid-thirties and still (as my boyfriend will attest) immensely easy to amuse. I’m glad I haven’t done/seen/eaten/worn it all, and now have nothing but 50 years of ennui stretching out before me. I know some teen and tween girls who are the angriest, graspingest, most unhappy and unfulfilled creatures I’ve met this side of Gollum. And let me tell you, if they ain’t happy, they ain’t gonna let anyone around them be happy.
Some gifts, especially of the spirit, only grow where material gifts haven’t crowded them out.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Mama Cate,
I am with you on not wanting to feed the whole guilt thing. Guilt is rarely (if ever) an effective motivator. I do think the “principle of use” (as I just now decided I want to call it) is a good indicator — after all, we absolutely need raw materials to complete our work. If you are going to use it, then use it by all means. If you aren’t, pass it along. I know that once I am moving into more of a “studio” phase with some of my pursuits, I am going to need to have a lot of inventory (note that fancy word for stash) on hand, which I am not always going to be using right away. But our materials inspire us and one of the things that is so wonderful about knitting and spinning and crocheting and sewing and all these other fiber arts is that we have creative power placed right in our hands. That’s pretty remarkable.
I know what you mean too about the tendency to purchase things because we are yearning to be in a different, more creative space. I just always feel really on guard about those feelings, because buying the stuff doesn’t naturally transport me there. It is just a temporary salve. And more and more and more I feel that we are being pushed into living a lifestyle based around consumption to meet needs that are not only manufactured, but are never filled for the precise reason that if we are allowed to feel full or satisfied for even a few minutes our entire economic system would collapse. It is a system that mass produces need so it can sustain itself. That scares me a little bit. And so I tend to drone on about it quite a lot.
This is not to say that I don’t purchase things on impulse or out of a sense of emptiness. It is not at all to say that I don’t make buying decisions that aren’t based out of need or are completely unaware. I’m not doing it right a lot of the time and the areas where I’m not doing it right I probably don’t even know about. That is why I want to be a part of more dialogues like this. I’m glad you stopped by and I’m even more glad to have discovered your thoughtful and inspiring blog.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Kai,
You sing it sister!
“I see kids these days—including in my own family—who get everything, instantly, and it seems to me they’re burning through their capacity for joy at an astounding rate. And once that gets used up, once you’re jaded, I don’t think you get that back.”
That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
“Some gifts, especially of the spirit, only grow where material gifts haven’t crowded them out.”
It’s like that one day when we were talking on the phone about how much more frightening it is to people to experience joy than it is to feel sorrow.
And you mentioned the whole cultural acceptance of total detachment and the idea that not caring about anything was this completely “cool” thing to embody. So many people buy without caring beyond the moment. They experience no lasting joy.
My goal when I buy something is to love it so much that I want to write a song about it that I will sing every day. I want it to be something so well loved and so often used that it is like a friend. I want to have a true understanding of the worth of a thing. I want it to embody some kind of magical property that tells me it is mine. Then, and only then, do I want to bring it home. This doesn’t always work and sometimes I just have to settle for practical. But I would rather wait and find the right thing than have a dozen of the wrong things.
January 20th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
First, I’d like to second the love and respect to mamacate. I read her piece on the true meaning of the season when you linked to it, and it profoundly resonated with me. I’ve directed others to it, and they also found it statedI {heart} you so hard, mamacate–you’re wonderful!
Second, this: “But I would rather wait and find the right thing than have a dozen of the wrong things.” Yes. Yes, exactly. In all areas of life, not just the shopping and the stashing. That’s a hard bit of insight to win your way to, and even harder to live up to. But at least you get it; you’re ahead of the game. Being human, you won’t adhere to it perfectly or unwaveringly, but you will let it guide you. You, my sister-friend, can be proud of yourself and the serious work you put into knowing yourself and growing your spirit. I know I am.
Thirdly, yep: I am so OVER the ‘cool’, detached, disinterested pose. Not sexy. Give me enthusiasm, give me passion, give me connection to a cause and commitment to an idea: that’s SEX-AY!
January 20th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Oops….don’t know how I lost half a sentence there (help me, I am blogtarded!) That should read: “I’ve directed others to it, and they also found it stated so well things they’d been feeling.”