If you look for friends, you’ll find them. Everywhere. If you’re curious of people’s lives, of their work, of their stories, they will greet you with warmth and smiles. If you show sincere curiosity, you’ll grow. In knowledge, in friendship, in your ability to connect with others. Life is impossible without growth. Life is impossible without people.
Tag: Society
Nothing New: Final reflections on my attempts at buying nothing new for almost a year
As the autumn is slowly coming to its end and the winter air sneaks into our house through nooks, crannies and keyholes, I am bringing out our old coats, hats, scarves and jumpers and I am bracing us for the winter. In fact I am surprised how long we’ve managed to survive just with our summer jackets, running around with bare necks and heads uncovered. It’s been by all means one of the warmest Novembers I’ve experienced in the UK.
The year is almost over and I’ve been thinking about the journey that I have taken through embracing the Nothing New Project and how much I’ve gained because of it. (Almost) all the goods that I’ve bought this year were not new, but the direction my thoughts have taken me in were new to me. To be truthful, I’ve started liking myself a bit more towards the end of this year as I felt I’ve been a part of something meaningful… maybe even a small part of a big social change. I hope I was. I hope I still am.
If I had to list one thing that I’ve learnt or re-learnt through this project, I would fail at the task, as it’s just impossible to encapsulate the outcome of this project in one line. It would never do it justice. I can hear some of you saying: ‘But come on Alicja, give us three things, three things that you’ve learnt from the Nothing New Project. How would you encourage others to go about it?’ My answer would be: Try to do these things:
1. Engage
2. Maintain
3. Connect
Engage with what you have. More often than not we crave for new things because we forget about the things that we already have. We walk through our rooms oblivious to their contents. There are books that are unread, films not yet watched, CDs hardly ever listened to. Give those items your attention. You have probably bought them with a strong purpose of engaging with them. Give yourself time to do it. The Nothing New Project made it very clear to me that buying is not becoming – that the act of buying something does not change us; it does not make us something else other than just a consumer. To change we need to engage with what we’ve invested in. Only our efforts lead to creations which bring about change. Having a house will never equal having a home if we don’t breathe life into it.
Maintain. This is something that I have had the biggest problem with for as long as my mind can recall. I rush from one job to another, from one project to another, from one occasion to another and my mind is so scattered that I’ve hardly ever given time to the maintenance tasks. Maintenance means to “keep things in being”. To do this we should repair, preserve, clean and conserve what we already have. One thing is to possess something, it’s quite another to give it a long and good life.
Connect with people. Search for or create communities where you can share, swap, circulate items. Enrich others. Sign up to Freecycle or other groups to keep things out of landfill. Use libraries, toy libraries, tool hires. We really don’t need to possess everything. Realistically, we do not have space for everything. In her beautiful post Surrender Sash Milne, the initiator of the Nothing New Project, wrote “Make every transaction an opportunity for human connection. With connection comes relationships, with relationships comes community.” This to me is the core message of the Nothing New Project. Often we hide in our homes with things that we have, with things that could be shared or offered to others (not only goods but also time and talents). When we show to others what we have, who we are, we realise that we have a lot and collectively we have everything. It’s so easy to feel unloved, it’s so easy to feel lonely when all we do is anonymous shopping, and then hiding and hording.
The Nothing New Project made me reach out and learn. I’ve started two groups in my communities and joined another. One of the two groups is doing really well, the other one… will be too (one day). You don’t always need to start a group, just attend the events that are going on in your area already. You are showing your support and openness for friendship through that. Be ambitious for your communities. Just because it must start from someone. Could it be you?
I’ve been following Sash Milne at Inked in Colour and her Nothing New Project for months now. I’ve embraced her ideas because they are simply great. Pop over to her blog for wonderful insights, great photography and writing.
Neighbourhood – an anonymous group of strangers?
A while ago I really started to suffer from being anonymous. I’ve been living in the area where I live now for a few years and the fact that I don’t know even the names of people who live on my street has started really getting me down. When you give birth to a child, you realise the importance of a community, anonymity is depressing – you want to know people and you want the people to know your child so that they can also keep an eye on his safety. But equally you want to look after other children too, as if the sheer fact of you becoming a parent made you a parent to other children too.
Are you not tired of not knowing your neighbours? Are you not tired of being impersonal? Are you not tired of shallow and occasional nods and greetings? I am. It’s certainly not the way I want to live my life. It’s certainly not how I want to bring my child up – within an anonymous group of strangers
Often.. I feel that we’re failing as social human beings. Look at our homes – they are like hotel rooms perched in the same corridor and we just see the other residents when they lock or unlock their doors or sweep their front doormat (that ironically often have ‘Welcome!’ written on it). We cannot treat our neighbours as if we or they were here only for a night. We live here – 52 weeks a year! In this borough, in this street, next to each other! We must do something to get to know each other better. To engage in a community at our doorstep.
I believe that one of the reasons why so many people complain about multicultural society is precisely because we do not spend time with our neighbours. We do not have or make occasions to meet them. What do we do, for example, to find out information? We search the Internet… What if we run out of milk, salt or sugar? We drive to that 24 hour supermarket. In the past it would be neighbours, friends or family at whose doors we would knock without hesitation… We would visit them or call them, they would instruct us, teach us, help us… Now these are the faceless, impersonal tools that we choose or are compelled to choose. Another lost or reduced opportunity in making a human connection with those who are in our proximity, with those who live nearby.
And our children? Why do we keep them indoors? Why do we place them in front of screens all the time? It really doesn’t take that much time to visit the nearest playground. Even 15 minutes a day on a slide can make a new friend to your son or daughter. Take your children out, venture to your local children or community centres, go to the local park, use the playground. They are there for us to be used. They are there for us to visit.
It’s possible to create a community. We just need to meet and talk. We need to create opportunities for conversation and for spending time together. It’s the only condition. There is a limit to the extent to which we can develop on our own… we need groups of people to overcome our limitations, we need each other to realise those limitations, to become truly human we need each other. Call me idealistic, but I really would like to change my neighbourhood and improve myself with it.
In the middle of the week friends visited our house, we ate together, our children played together, we laughed and talked. Usually the middle of the week can feel quite heavy and daunting, that evening was uplifting, it made us feel loved and connected. It made us belong.
I like to get that feeling from walking down my street… that pleasant feeling of belonging and being part of something bigger than myself. Wouldn’t you?
Curiosity builds community
Hundreds of emotions run through my body every time when my friends are telling me about leaving the UK and moving back to Poland. The longing for my country, the nostalgia for its customs and landscape, the love for my family and their way of life. Time has not been able to change those emotions, but what I am very grateful for is that it has managed to add new ones too.
I was travelling today through one of the busiest and most multicultural areas in my town. I was looking at people of different ethnic origins and cultures shopping for fruit and vegetables together, chatting and greeting each other at the street and on the bus stops. Immigrants, locals and newcomers all in one place. I looked at them and felt deep love for all of them. They’ve been forming me for the last ten years, letting me get to know them in everyday situations. They’ve been enriching me beyond measure. They’ve been educating me beyond measure and been stretching my identity beyond the borders of my Polish upringing. In so many ways I am them now and they are me.
On Saturday I took my son to a local hardresser. He was a young man, probably not even in his thirties, originally from Iraq. To my astonishment he started speaking to us in fluent Polish. To me this confirms that we are reaching out towards each other and that we like to learn of each other’s cultures. People have been always curious about people… and if that curiosity is removed, through whatever means, we will lose our ability to evolve as a society. We must remain curious of each other. We must want to get to know each other.
The other day I heard someone saying on the radio: “I wasn’t born in Scotland; but Scotland was born in me.” I think I can easily use those words to say: I wasn’t born multcultural, but multiculturalism was born in me.
Nothing New: Too big to be eaten alone
My neighbour is one of the most generous people I’ve met in the UK. She’s always got something to give, share or offer starting from time and tea, through to garden flowers, toys or even pieces of old furniture. What her body language and attitude communicates is…
…that there’s always something that we can give, that there is always something we can share…
Isn’t this true for all of us? I haven’t bought anything new for myself or my son this year and we still have enough… enough books to spread around, enough items of clothing to give to charity shops, enough toys to donate to poorer children, enough jackets to give to those in need… we have enough…
…because last year I was buying new things and a year before too, and two and three and four years ago as well…
…because we’ve been receiving presents this year, last year and two and three years ago too…
…because we and our family members have been sentimental about our childhood and adolescence and we’ve got those things too, things that are much older than our son, things that come from our past, things that are as old as we are… we’ve got them too.
And so we are full, our house is full, our life is full.
Some of you may say that this is a perfect state of being, that this is self-sufficiency, that you don’t need to borrow and that you don’t need to be too ingenious about dealing with your daily life, because for so many of us, a lot equals security, a lot means being safe…. and it’s so easy to believe it… so easy to think that… and to store, and to hoard, and to collect and to gather, and to keep and to hold on to… and to store, and to hoard, and to collect and to gather, and to keep and to hold on to… and it goes on again.
Our grandparents used to do that because they didn’t have enough… because they had plans for those items… because they knew what will happen with them. Often every one of them.
We do that because we think that we don’t have enough and because we must have it… because we feel insecure without having it all. The thing is as individuals we should not be really striving to have it all because as a society we have enough, we can swap and share the goods that we have, we can borrow from each other, from the libraries, from hire centers. There is no crime in doing this as long as we respect the goods that are available and treat them as if it was our pocket that paid for them, as if it was our hard work that purchased them.
Just yesterday our close friends came to our house to borrow some garden chairs for their party. We had a tea together, we had a chat together and we shared our news and ideas. Sharing created an additional opportunity for socialising, a spontaneous occasion to get-together…. Don’t we long for them?
This cake of goods that we store in our rooms, garages, garden sheds and attics is too big to be eaten alone… It’s time to invite others to the table.
Postcards Without Stamps 