buy nothing day November 25, 2009
Could you go without buying anything for a day? This Friday is known as Black Friday in the U.S., one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Isn’t it funny we have a holiday for shopping? One of my favorite magazines, Adbusters, a wonderful little anti-consumerist gem, has proposed that everyone buy nothing for this day of typical over consumption. They say: “You know the saying: a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You feel that things are falling apart – the temperature rising, the oceans churning, the global economy heaving – why not do something? Take just one small step toward a more just and sustainable future. Make a pact with yourself: go on a consumer fast. Lock up your credit cards, put away your cash and opt out of the capitalist spectacle. You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized. But you will persist and you will transcend – perhaps reaching the kind of epiphany that can change the world.”
This week I am winding down after a busy week of working in New York City, helping wellness businesses become more successful, a job I feel blessed to have. My gift to myself this holiday weekend is that I have kept my schedule clear and will be spending the weekend chillaxing in my humble abode in SLO, CA. I have a tendency to do too much and wear myself out so this weekend I decided I wanted to give myself a Roxy Style Staycation Yoga Retreat. This will include home cooked meals, daily yoga and meditation practice, some time enjoying the great outdoors, and I’m not exactly sure what else. Maybe it will also include a day or full weekend of buying nothing, a little technology break, no driving. I was thinking it wouldn’t be that hard to make an efficient compromise to do this more permanently by only supporting local businesses, and once I started thinking of it, I realized how lucky I am to have farmer’s markets everywhere, a locally owned co-op, and local restaurants, movie theaters, everything, all right in my back yard.
I am grateful for everything in my life this Thanksgiving, my loved ones, yoga practice, work, health and more. Yet, I also feel like this is a great opportunity to acknowledge what I don’t like and what I can do to help change it. I think it is possible to enjoy the good part of the holidays, and to find a way to stop making them so much about consuming but about the subtle, yet sweeter things we can give each other.
I like this post. Good luck!