The shop with a difference

There are over ten thousand charity shops in the UK. They sell mainly second-hand goods donated to them from any and every generous soul. You just turn up with your bag or box filled with small treasures and hand it over to the person that’s behind the counter. By selling your products, the shop raises funds for its parent charity. Or you can just simply shop there.

There’s a surprisingly large circle of people that are made happy through your give-aways to the charity shop. A) You are happy because you have done a good deed B) Your family is happy because you have eventually removed that unused-and-dumped-in-the-corner irritating cast away of an item C) The charity workers feel less lonely in their quest for good-doing – you provide them with evidence that there is quite a handful of open-hearted characters in their proximity (and how encouraging and uplifting it is to know that your town is full of generous beings!) D) The beneficiaries of the parent charity (no explanation needed here) E) The charity-shop customer who has just found what he has been looking for for ages and just a day before gave up hope of finding it F) The customer’s partner, friend and family that are going to be experiencing relief after the lucky find.

I do have a few nice things that caught my eye while I was visiting the shops. The vase above is one of them. It looks quite nice in our still-not-ready and rough-looking kitchen.

Do you shop or give to charity shops? Is there anything precious that you found there? Or maybe you are planning to visit a charity shop this weekend? What cause do you support?

Consumers or Producers?

In the last few days my mind has moved on from a personal approach to consumerism to its broader aspect. I am thinking of our enormous (societal) ability to consume beyond the level of shopping.

I’ve been greatly privileged with being brought up in the countryside… in a village full of farms, orchards, green and golden fields. The images that I carry in my head are those of hard-working people, of people who care greatly and of people who produce and make every effort at creating quality foods for others. I’ve been observing people who dedicate their days, holidays and weekends to making sure that whatever piece of land they own will yield the desired crop… that they have something to offer to the world once the summer finishes. This isn’t done without sacrifice. It does take a lot out of them… but somehow I cannot imagine them doing anything else… they just grow up with that mindset… that mentality… that you are worth as much as you can offer to others.

This ability and eagerness to produce for others seems to have slipped out of the Western psyche. We’ve been too contented with being consumers for ourselves. It’s not only about the economical dimension but also about personal and social aspects. How much do we give from ourselves to others? How far are we able to extend ourselves? How creative and how hard-working are we?

I think that at least in our purchasing choices, if that is possible, we should not be driven by the price tag only. We ought to be more community-spirited when it comes to shopping. This is so important! To make the region that you live in a sustainable source of nourishment and growth. I stand for buying local. I try to support as many shops and farms in the area where I live as possible as I feel I am not entitled to complain about the economic situation in my local area if I don’t actively support its economy. I feel responsible for doing my share.

This countryside mindset also compels me to ask myself: To what extent am I a producer? What do I produce? What can I produce? With the abilities that I have been given, how can I support my family, society, friends and the environment? How can I be of value to the communities that I inhabit? Are there areas where I am only a consumer? Can I change it? Should I change it? Have I struck the right balance? So many questions to learn from..

No more sleepwalking. Things are changing.

My resolution of not buying anything new has been influencing my thoughts and feelings since the beginning of this year in ways that I didn’t expect.

The initial impressions were those of excitement and motivation. I was filled with nice and heart-warming sensations. I felt liberated and appreciated the beauty and luxury around. The first weeks of not buying gave me almost instantaneously a sense of pride and accomplishment to the point that I was almost congratulating myself on how undisturbed my routines and mindset were to that point. I’ve been on the top of the world and then things started changing this week… I’ve started changing this week…

I’ve been examining the contents of our house and I’ve been discovering things… items that I have bought at various stages of my life… things that I have bought for myself and my son at a whim… objects that I found absolutely necessary at the time of purchase and forgotten about them a while later… As I was going through all these things I was getting more and more uncomfortable… The items that I was holding were not really what I had bought… I had been buying something else… I had been buying the routes to and symbols of security and comfort… appreciation and acceptance… I had been shopping for elegance, intelligence, affection, ambitions and confidence… I had been buying resilience… character… adventure… health. I had been buying those things not realising that none of them was in fact sold. And I was just an average consumer. Aware, informed and with good knowledge of advertising strategies and marketing, I have still sleepwalked into this trap… naïvely thinking that by purchasing something I have found a way forward to whatever plan, aspiration or ache I had at the time.

I don’t want to sleepwalk anymore. I don’t want to consume dreams. I want to work to make them come true. I don’t want to consume feelings. I want to express them. I don’t want to consume plans. I want to see them through. I don’t want to consume character traits. I want to develop them.

I had been trying to satiate the needs that those items were never able to fill on their own… I had been deceiving myself… Now I want to fill those needs without those items because to be frank I am terribly angry… and I would like to blame someone but there is no obvious scapegoat so I am just left with this massive and unpleasant feeling of shame and embarrassment… about the way I led my life… about how I replaced the real, raw and genuine sensitivities with stuff.

I want to look after this girl now and her weaknesses and vulnerabilities… and let her own herself… I will not let her exchange dreams for goods. They are too precious to be sold.

The real-stuff corner and its powers

I used to think that toddlers love colourful toys. That vibrancy is what draws them in. I was mistaken. This beautiful toy above was presented to my son from our dear friend. It was offered with the most generous heart and best intentions but at the moment it’s mummy who plays with it most often. I think that my son will grow to like it and will learn to play with it when the time comes but now… it’s the real stuff and the real world that he seeks… so much so that the floors in our house are at times invisible while the opposite is true of our bookshelves and cupboards.

To manage this situation I created a corner for my son with the real stuff (everyday objects) to freely mess around with. The space is a hit. Both with him and with me. I cook or I do some work while he plays joyfully without my nagging. We are much happier together like this.

Looking at this little boy playing just with a simple jar I was again reminded that the ordinary in life can be a source of great adventure… perhaps it’s just about not seeing a jar as a jar…. but as something that you can… twist, turn, pat, rub, bite, wiggle, smell, wipe, stare at, stare through, scrub, make sounds with, cover your tiny teddy-bear with or catch a spider into.

I must admit I regret a few toy purchases. I should have paced myself a little and not been so swayed by their cuteness. It’s just I didn’t really appreciate the curiosity-generating powers of the real world. I didn’t understand that this is what a small child wants to know most about. So we’re going to be learning about the real world together this year. Discovering and re-discovering what’s around us. It’s Nothing New after all…

“…for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

~Fred Rogers

Seeing the luxurious

There is a Spanish saying: Mejor solo que mal acompañado, which literally means Better alone than in bad companionship. I always thought that this is true of relationships. That a good relationship, be it friendship, romantic partnership or a work team, reflects the beauty of everyone in it. No one is overshadowed. No one is dwarfed. No one is suppressed. The same is true of objects that fill our homes and other spaces. Their beauty is revealed either when they stand alone or in the right company.

There are many items in my house which have lost their charm either because they’ve been swamped by other stuff or have been overshadowed by bigger or gaudier objects. I’ve started giving space to those little beauties by de-cluttering the house or just altering their arrangement. I’ve learnt through making these small improvements that recognizing the luxurious is all about this… about seeing and presenting things as luxurious although they are common, normal, average, typical and trivial.

Things that are given space stand out. We perceive them as special and we take notice of them. If you think of luxury and beauty in those terms it is almost impossible to have a life that is deprived of them. In that sense, you are never poor. It’s just about perception.. about having the eye that’s willing to see beauty in simplicity… it’s about having or training the beautiful eye.

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness”

~Henry David Thoreau

By the way, have you recently visited any of these blogs: #BehindtheLens or Capturing Little Moments? One of my favourite beauty-spotters recently.

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