A more mature friend recently sent me an e-mail about how the older generation knew how to recycle. They also knew how to save way before anyone of my generation did. It was one of those smug little diddies written by some person who was a child of the depression or a child whose parents had lived during the depression. Now, don’t get me wrong! I agree that more seasoned folks understood how to reduce, reuse and recycle and better yet knew how not to accumulate in the beginning, but somewhere along the way they, forgot. So needless to say I wasn’t necessarily impressed with its sentiment.
I remember way back when, the 1970s, as my niece would say, forever ago, when I was a small child that my Mother did all kinds of “crazy” things to use over and save. A glass jar never got thrown away empty. It was always used to put leftover grease in it so we wouldn’t clog the drains. Margarine papers were used to grease cookie sheets. We were constantly reminded not to stand and stare at the contents of the refrigerator or close the door as we went outside. Don’t waste electricity was the cry! Today, I prefer the colloquial, “Don’t let all the bought air out the door”. We had one car and we carpooled. My sister wore hand me downs from me until the age of five when she equaled me in height and then I started getting her hand me downs. We shared toys as gifts. But then somewhere in the 80s it all changed. We all got our own stuff. And it was our parents thinking they were doing the right thing and…for that place and time they were doing the right thing.
And before we leave the 1970s, we didn’t do all that stuff because my Mother knew who Rachel Carson was or had read The Silent Spring. My parents weren’t Hippies by any means of the imagination. We did do Girl Scouts and there was certainly a focus on environmentalism but not a hit you over the head kind of thing. We did all this because it all saved a different kind of green or at least stretched it. We were not poor by any means but you didn’t waste anything that cost money and everything cost money.
But then it all stopped! The 1980s seemed to switch our ideas about ownership of things and by the 1990s we were full on our way to the gluttony of stuff. As we covered our lives with what I call CPJ (Cheap Plastic Junk) or a friend’s husband calls “Shelf Sh*t”, we lost value in everything. We lost value in money, things, relationships and even humanness. What we owned was more important than what we did. “My life” was more important than “Your Life”, “The Community” or anything else. And guess what? The same people saying we used to, were right there with us collecting all that stuff.
So before someone sends me something else about how it used to be and it was better, what I would prefer to hear about is how I change today. I am not asking people to go back in time. I have been accused of this. I never, ever think going back in time to solve today’s problems is the answer. I am asking people to think forward. What if? Can I? If we could? Let’s solve this! Let’s fix this. Let’s think a different way about this. And then let’s do it! So does anyone have a what if for me? I would love to hear it.
I intentionally did not read another article on the site about stuff so I wouldn’t be influenced. But if you want read someone who is smarter than me, I invite you to read Stuff: by Dr. J. Ellsworth Kalas.
