Heart burn.

"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?" -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I wait tables. Being college age and waiting tables almost always equates to an empty or negative bank account and obscene amounts of singles. Which being a girl, or an attractive man even, can get you a lot of awkward stares in the check out line at Target. But, thats not that point I was getting to. In the last year alone I have made thousands of dollars in tip money, yet standing here at the beginning of a new year looking at my tax return forms, I could not even begin to tell you where that money has gone. 

Which is the point I was getting to. On the loom of American culture there is one thread that intricately makes its way throughout all the rest, tying them together, without which we would seemingly fall apart. Seemingly. The entire world revolves on the axis of a copper cutout of Abraham Lincoln's mug shot. We can't deny it, we can't disprove it, but if money makes the world go round then materialism holds us down. Not like gravity however, more like fried chicken, saturated in grease with a side of clogged arteries, please. If you have ever stepped into the ring with American cuisine by the end you most likely rolled out, unable to button your jeans, ready to re-cooperate with a long intimate afternoon with your couch, a bottle of Pepcid and package of Roll-aids. If you listen closely to what your stomach is telling you, you're never full in a way that  replenishes you but you're always ready for the next round. 

This is the way it goes with stuff. We go to college, undoubtedly collecting debts that we will be paying off to the end of time, so that we can get a good job to pay for our stuff. We go to work everyday so we can pay for stuff. The new stuff turns into old stuff and then we find it two months later in the box you meant to donate to Goodwill. We need more stuff to replace the now old stuff so, we go back to school to get yet another degree, and more student loans, so that we can get a better job and upgrade our stuff. Then we have a mental breakdown (also know as the "mid-life crisis") because for the briefest moment we realize that in the middle of all our stuff we are unhappy. After a short stint with a personal therapist, we get back up convinced that the solution to our problem is obviously, more stuff. Better stuff, bigger stuff. But the craziest part is that everything is stuff to us. Things we can buy, careers we can change, people, friends, husbands and wives; the latest version, the newest model, bigger, better, bolder. Stuff.

So in all the logic and brilliance of our 3 pounds of brain, also the weight of steak eaten by an average Texan family during the SuperBowl, we have basically come up with this conclusion: The things that we have do not fulfill us, therefore we need more of the things that have not satisfied us because that will ultimately bring us happiness. It is probably sad that I haven't thought this deep about the human condition since Supersize Me came out on DVD. And I can follow this thought process all the way back to a TurboTax form telling me how much money I have made this year, and wondering where it all went. Thank you IRS. In all of this though, I have to wonder further if our materialism is the disease or just a symptom of? Is the root of this issue found deeper in the heart of this world? 

There was this man, some would say a crazy man, a revolutionist, about 2000 some odd years ago that questioned the same as me. Better yet I think he knew the answer. He didn't have a home, so he would just go town to town teaching people, staying with friends, chilling with the poor and the unwanted. Green Peace would love this guy. Anyway, walking from town to town he stopped to talk to a lady drawing water at a well (pretty big social taboo by the way, they didn't have feminists yet, but like I said, this was a radical guy, breaking through social norms was a daily occurrence) and he begins telling her that more than the water she needed for her body, she needed water for her soul. See much like us she spent her time looking for the newer model and after five or so husbands, hadn't found it but this man, Jesus, knew the issue wasn't on the surface, the issue was in the heart. The woman's need went deeper than a man to provide, or a craving for a younger more attractive man; what she was in search of was love. A love that could fill the emptiness she felt.  

We've been lied to. Day after day, through media, politicians, corporations, sadly even in our churches. They keep telling us we need this stuff for fulfillment, if we could only get more of it we will be satisfied. But the reality is we are trying to fill something in our flesh that is missing in our soul. Our hearts are clogged with grease and we salve the heart burn with the temporary fix. Pepcid, our savior. We don't need as much as we have. Honestly, we need hardly any of what we have. 

I haven't waited tables in a while, and a couple of months ago I had the opportunity to visit an orphanage in Honduras. The kids may not have everything they want, but they have everything they need, they are loved. In trying to teach the kids about responsibility they have art and jewelry making classes through which they make a small allowance. Every once and a while, when there is someone available to take them, they go into town to spend some of their money. On clothes, or toys but usually on precious commodities, namely, chips and candy. On this particular day one of the girls went into town to spend some of her limited funds, like the rest of the kids when she walked out of the supermarket her bag was filled with chips and juice something she probably hadn't been able to have for a while and wouldn't be having for another stretch of time. The volunteer with her went walking ahead not realizing he had lost the girl behind, upon realizing this he turned back to find her giving all of her treats to a homeless lady on the road. He hadn't even noticed the woman. The moral to this story could be, give to the poor, to the homeless; and this would be a good moral. But the real moral is this, in her act of kindness she gave to the lonely and loveless.

And after all, that's all we really want, isn't it?