Day 100: Tarantula Teapot
by Lisa Johnson
Karen's note: I am still at the conference. Please enjoy this post by my brave and radical friend, monarch advocate and University of Michigan scientist Lisa Johnson. (PS I got rid of a stainless steel pitcher and sugar bowl last weekend for today's thing.)
If you seek, as Karen and I do, a simpler, less cluttered lifestyle, and you are a little observant, you will notice it right away. When you assemble that box to take to the Salvation Army, take a good look at what is in it. In my case, things that I have been given as gifts always dominate “the box.” Sure, there are always foolish things that you bought for yourself, but the evil that is the unwanted gift is a special little beastie that is hard to vanquish because it has its nasty tendrils wrapped around every part of our lives and culture.
My husband and I began our lives together with a bold act against the culture of gifts right away by having no engagement ring. We rejected the most important gift of all, and had no tangible, purchasable, and (importantly) expensive evidence of our plans to wed. Believe me, there was a giant social cost. For more than a year I suffered through the knowing and condescending looks of sympathy from practically everyone I knew when they reached for my hand and found it unadorned. One work acquaintance just told me flat out to my face that if I didn’t have a ring, that we weren’t really getting married.
Despite her prediction, we did wed, and immediately agreed to face and defeat together the guilt wielding, money-snatching monster that is the “Hallmark Holiday.” The monster told us that we had to give it money every February 14th, or it meant that we didn’t really care about each other. We resisted, and our love continued. It told us that if we didn’t make our yearly payments on our birthdays that we weren’t special. We looked into each other’s eyes and knew that we were. Failing to drive a wedge between us, it instead tried threatening members of our family. The monster told us that if we didn’t get each other Christmas presents, and plenty of them, that our families would suffer because Christmas would be ruined. Everyone survived and we saved a fortune – every year.
Between the two of us, we have slain the dragon, but what about everyone else? We could stop giving gifts to one another, but we couldn’t prevent the monster from reaching us through others, no matter how hard we tried. The well-meant gifts from our friends and relatives have flowed into our lives as steady as the Nile all of our lives
 |
| This one's a keeper |
My favorite is the, “I know you like these” gifts, or IKYLTs. In a heartfelt attempt to give you something you will really like, we latch on to some small thing that we know about someone and then use that knowledge to guide our purchases. I have carried many a box to the Salvation Army, chock full of IKYLT gifts adorned by butterflies. Everyone knows I raise and tag monarch butterflies in the summer, so they just can’t resist buying me butterfly things to satisfy the Beast. Butterfly jewelry, butterfly pictures, butterfly ornaments, butterfly knick knacks, butterfly, butterfly, BUTTERFLY. And I thank them, because I love them and I know they mean well, and quietly and quickly chuck the thing right back out the door, sometimes the very next day. But my favorite gift in this category, real tarantula lives there right on the counter. I love it because it is absolutely absurd, but this is rare. Most IKYLTs are headed directly for “the box.”
which I have kept and appears in the photo, is my tarantula teapot. Yes, you heard me correctly; it is a teapot with tarantulas on it. It is creepy and weird, and it freaks me out to have it in the kitchen, even though my
IKYLTs are easy to dispose of without too much guilt. Maybe someone else will want the “butterfly thingy”. But there is no escape from the personalized gift. You don’t just receive these gifts, you marry them. The butterfly snow globe with your name and the year emblazoned on it is yours “until death do you part”. The worst part though, is that this kind of gift has only two possible futures after you die. It either hits the landfill (because who wants something emblazoned with a stranger’s name and date?) or it is kept by generations of descendants who can’t emotionally bear the responsibility of throwing out something of yours that is so “personal.” So it becomes a special family heirloom, even if you actually hated it and couldn’t bring yourself to put it in the trash.
Changing our culture of purchasing “things” to prove our love for our friends and family is difficult, but it is a necessary step if we are going to ever reach a place of sustainability, stop the flow of resources into our landfills, and unburden our personal lives from the “stuff” we own. I am not a religious person but the words of the Quaker Christin Hadley Snyder speak to me in this regard:
Simplicity is not so much about what we own, but about what owns us. If we need lots of possessions to maintain our self-esteem and create our self-image and to look good to our neighbors, then we have forgotten or neglected that which is real and inward. If our time, money, and energy are consumed in selecting, acquiring, maintaining, cleaning, moving, improving, replacing, dusting, using, showing off, and talking about our possessions, then there is little time, money, and energy left for our other pursuits such as the work we do to further the Community of God.
Amen.
I love this post!
ReplyDelete