Weight Loss

Just in time for resolution season, Zac Brown Band has released a new song, "Homegrown", that has inspired me to go on a weight loss plan.  Not a diet, mind you; I’m talking about reducing what the Band calls “the weight that you carry of the things you think you want."

Want to feel lighter this year?  Don’t count calories; count your blessings.  I’m going to reduce my wish list, not my weight.  In the song, Zac names some of his blessings:  his “good friends, living down the street,” his attractive wife, his pleasant small town (where, presumably, everyone knows his name), and realizes: “I’ve got everything I need, and nothing that I don’t.”

It would be tempting to dismiss Zac Brown’s contentment:  of course he is content!  Zac is a country music mega-star who could surely afford anything he wants or needs.  I can hear someone asking, "What if he was burdened with my underwater mortgage, dead-end job, tapped-out credit card, and surly spouse?”  Surely then he’d be writing about being “home flown”, not “Homegrown".

Perhaps.  But I appreciate the reminder that threads through many of Zac’s songs—“Homegrown" is only the latest example—to appreciate the simple good things in life, many of which are free or cheap and available to us all, regardless of our employment status or bank account balance.  Consider:

I like my chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right…there is no dollar sign on peace of mind....  

That’s from the band’s breakout hit single, “Chicken Fried,” in 2008.  Now nearly seven years later, Zac and band are still extolling the virtues of home, family, and simple living.  “Homegrown” reminds us of this again, and adds to it the realization that much of our angst, emotional baggage, and simple unhappiness comes from wanting what we don’t have rather than what we do have.  “It’s the weight that you carry of the things you think you want” that slows us down.

So while I am not normally a new year’s resolution person, this year I’m taking Zac Brown’s advice to pay more attention to the good things I’ve already got.  And I’m going to focus on reducing the length of my wish list—too much wanting will only weigh me down.

Materialism Fails, Again

It turns out that not only does materialism hurt your kids, but it hurts your marriage, too. The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported on a recent study that looked at how couples’ attitudes toward money affected their marriages:

Couples who said money wasn’t important to them scored about 10% to 15% better on measures of relationship quality, such as marriage stability, than couples in which both partners were materialistic.

The effects are additive, too: couples where both spouses were materialistic were worse off than couples where only one spouse was.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” says Jason Carroll, a BYU professor or family life and lead author of the study. “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

Interestingly, it was the attitude to money that made the difference—regardless of how much money the couples actually had. So I guess money can’t buy happiness, after all.

One obvious question: how did they define materialism? I haven’t seen the actual study, but apparently the authors asked participants to rate how important it is to them to have lots of money and things. In a consumerist society, it is impossible not to have some level of interest in having money and things. I think the line is crossed when the pursuit or maintenance of stuff begins to crowd out human relationships. If your possessions are more important to you than people, then your marriage, or your relationship with your kids, is naturally going to suffer.

The late, great Steve Jobs was quoted in 1993 saying, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me….Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.” Doing something wonderful isn’t limited to grand projects like upending industries and creating desirable electronic devices (as Steve did). Wonderful might be coming home earlier to help your spouse with dinner. Wonderful can be offering to take the kids for a morning so a spouse can have a break. Wonderful would almost certainly be putting down the Blackberry and listening to your kids talking to you.

I’ll bet you can think of at least one way where your focus on money or stuff is getting in the way of an important relationship. Why not try, just once, to put the relationship ahead of your wallet, and see what happens. Let me know in the comments how it works for you.

Materialism Fails

I was fascinated by a news item I saw yesterday here on Britain's Daily Telegraph site, where it was reported that a recent UNICEF study concludes that in Britain materialism is rampant.  Indeed, according to the report,

materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents 'pointlessly' amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours.

One researcher goes on to conclude that:

While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, [their] parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children.

I haven't found a similar study focused on America, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that materialism is rampant here, too.  The observation of Reg Bailey, chief executive of Britain's Mothers Union, speaking about British society, could apply equally well to American society:

I think it is an issue with the nature of our society, that so often we’ve placed a dependence on things rather than being.

As I've written before here, contentment comes from not from seeking stuff, but from seeking REM:  relationships, experiences, and memories.  British kids are crying out for time from their parents; according to the UNICEF study, their parents seem to despair of giving it to them because they are working too hard to provide stuff for them instead. But stuff can never provide long-term contentment, because the thrill of acquisition never lasts; pretty soon we adapt to the new thing, the feeling of elation wears off, and we turn to pursuing the next new thing.  What a treadmill to be stuck on!  Lord willing, I will be able to recognize when I am on it....

Materialism certainly is a problem in America, but I wonder if its effects are as severe as in Britain, which in an earlier UNICEF report ranked worst of 21 developed countries for child welfare.  According to the Telegraph article,

British children were twice as likely as the average to have been drunk by the age of 15, and significantly less likely to be in two parent families than those elsewhere, were more likely to have tried drugs and had one of the worst diets in the developed world.

Why has materialism seemingly had a more deleterious effect in Britain than in America or other developed countries?  Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, has a hypothesis:

We are teaching our children, practically from the moment they are born, that the one thing that matters is getting more stuff.  We are probably the most secular society in the world, we do not have the counterbalance of religion but at the same time we are a very driven society very into progress and making money. (emphasis added)

According to the Scripture of that religion that Britain used to have, Jesus warned the crowd, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  (Luke 12:15).  Be rich not in stuff, but in relationships.  Pursue experiences with those you love instead of another gadget.  Stockpile memories, not shirts.  You, your children, indeed all your loved ones, will be the happier for it.