I am a consumer whore . . .

Once upon a time there were Americans who believed that if they were honest and hard-working they could make a better life that those who came before them. Once upon a time people in this country wanted simple things like happiness, freedom, and all of those other ideals that we’ve been taught to cherish.

In my life things are different. Today there is a woman somewhere who votes to give up her liberty in order to maintain a false sense of security, in order to thicken the veil between her eyes and the Truth that nothing in life is certain. Today there is a man who’s been handed everything by those who came before him and throws it all away to drown himself in the sorrow of his emptiness. Here there are the people who have everything their predecessors wanted, and spend their lives chasing after the dream of having Even More, of having more than anyone could possibly need. Today, instead of hoping for financial security born of hard work, instead of having more than enough, we spend our days grueling down the corporate ditch and playing the lottery, hoping that our dollar-a-week investment will free us from the hell of perpetual inconsequence and land us a dream home in California.

Sometimes I’m afraid for my country. Not because of terrorism or the rest of the world, but because of our own materialism. I don’t know that we can go on forever in this cycle of wanting and getting and wanting more, of acquiring and consuming and throwing away. How much can we gather into our homes and our hearts before we collapse under the weight of it all, imploding from the centrifugal force as the gravity of our greed is our undoing?

I read somewhere that the American Dream has become the American nightmare. I think it would be more accurate to say that the American Dream has become the American Delusion. Today, instead of wanting enough, we want “a Hummer on twenty-two’s” to use my brother’s phraseology. Somehow we’ve begun to believe that the emptiness we have can be filled by things. And when we have those things we feel even worse, so we get even more, thinking that will be the answer. Sometimes the things we acquire to try and stay the emptiness include people. We gather people around us but never even know them, and how could we? Do we even know ourselves?

This is how we live: hording people and things around us in a frantic attempt to silence the voices inside, to try and ignore the echoes in our dormant spirits.

I fear for myself living under the culture of delusion. I’m afraid of being sedated by the things in my life, of losing what’s important. At twenty-three I feel like I already have so many of the things I’ve always wanted: I have my Faith, I have the most wonderful husband in the whole world, I have a very unique and wonderful family, and I have amazing friends. There are things I’m still working on: for example, I’m (hopefully) making progress toward the kind of job want by being in law school. And I want to have kids someday, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The feeling of wanting more can be especially pressing when we have everything – we’re not socialized to be still in this country, so enjoying what we have is much harder than trying to get more. How do I keep this from happening to me?

When I was about eighteen, I had a brief conversation with another Baha’i that stuck out in my mind. Although I hardly know this person, I’ll always remember him saying to me that your twenties pass by without anything really happening and each year is pretty much the same. He said this with conviction and a hint of melancholy, as if that was simply the way of things. At that moment I resolved to never, ever let that happen to me. I promised myself that every year, every day, would be meaningful, that I would never get caught up in the delusions of this country, that every year would be alive and full of joy. Maybe this is part of what I need to do to keep that promise. Maybe that’s why I make things hard on myself.

This post has turned more confessional that I intended. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I feel like I have the opportunity to keep myself from getting trapped. I also think it’s an opportunity that we all have, if we’re able to become aware of it.

When it comes to what I want in the future, there’s a lot I just don’t know. But I know with absolute certainty that I want to be truly happy, and that I want to be able to share that happiness. I know that I don’t want to spend my life being a consumer whore, buying seersucker suits and fast cars to make myself feel alive. I want to be content on rainy night just watching the sky, on sunny days driving with the windows down. I think it’s time we rediscovered the American Dream.