Monthly Archives: December 2015

Buy less stuff this Christmas

A friend sent this post from Plum Village monastery regarding the holiday season. I don’t think I could really add much to the message so I’ll just post the link: http://plumvillage.org/news/a-green-santa-and-a-hug-of-love/

One sentence that popped out at me: “We do not need to wait for our governments and corporations to do the right thing.” It looks like such a simple sentence, but how to put it into practice? I suppose that buying less stuff this Christmas would make a difference, but it then begs the question, if we spend less on stuff, what should we do with that time or money instead? How could it be better used? I suppose that if we didn’t have to spend that time and money shopping, we could improve our knowledge to add more value to the world, spend the time with someone we care about, go look at some art, walk around in the park, clean the garage, catch up on paperwork so we’re less stressed… actually, there are a lot of things we could be doing that would make our world a better place. Maybe just about anything would be better than spending money to buy people things when we’re not even sure if they need or want them, or buying things for ourselves that we don’t need just because it’s Boxing Day.

So maybe I will add to the message: this Christmas, let’s give the world the gift of not being stressed out and broke.