My phone broke yesterday

My phone broke yesterday.

It's not a big catastrophe as such, it's an old Sony Ericsson, and as everybody seems to have smartphones these days, mine seems so anacronistic. But I like my old phone …

I had carelessly put the phone in the cute pocket I have on the sleeve of my fearless icebreaker fleece. Natural wool from New Zealand sheep, that I can trace to find out where they grazed, and what they were called, one of the joys of being a ethical consumer, at least that's what I tell myself I am.

As I started out on my daily morning run (more about that run later in another blogpost), I had forgot to zip the zipper on the sleeve and the phone came flying out of the pocket and came crashing to the sidewalk just missing a fellow human being. Pieces of plastic shattered. It looked like instant death, but as I retrieved the pieces, I realized that they could be put together again, and the phone still WORKS!

Sort of …

The memory card keeps sliding out and I have to sort of hold it when I use the phone, which is creating some interesting patterns of tension in my fingers. Anyway, the point being:

All this would not be a challenge, if I could just go out and buy a new phone.

I can afford to buy a new one, but I won't.

A month ago I vowed to not buy anything new for a year, which creates an interesting tension in a situation where I actually need something.

We have gotten used to, when we need something, to just go out and buy it. We have the money for it and everything can be bought. It's so tempting and so easy to give in to our urges and indeed we are fed messages the whole time, that even if we have something that works perfectly, that's not good enough, we need the newest, or we need the most fashionable, or we need what everyone else has. Lots of industries survive on that drive in us, the clothes industry, the gadgets industry, the you name it industry. Even yoga has become an industry, and is feeding that urge, but that is also a different post :-)

Fact is, that that drive, the urge to shop, is destroying our precious planet. Our planet can not support the growing consumerism amongst 7 billion people and that number is also growing. Planet earth is moaning and groaning and giving weight under the strain now, rainforest is rapidly disappearing, icecaps at the Poles are melting(beautiful talk on TED on this):http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_nicklen_tales_of_ice_bound_wonderlands.html?quote=1762

pollution and C02 levels are rising at an alarming rate. Bad news.

And maybe my small choice is not going to change anything, but the point is, that it changes something in me.

At least I can make the decision to not be part of the problem. To leave as little imprint as possible.

It stops med dead in my tracks. It restrains me. It reigns in my addiction to consume, and believe me I feel the pull.

Now of course, we could say, that it's ridiculous to not just buy a new phone, when this one is broken, BUT this is where the fun comes in. To force myself to not just take the easiest route awakens a creative source, that is not just better for our planet, but also more fun.

Buy nothing new for a year means working with the pull, the addiction, the habit, the tendency in stead of just giving into it and that is where spiritual work arises, in that field, where we are willing to discover something about ourselves and the world we live in.

When I look around I see a world addicted to consuming. I don't want to be a part of it.

I am inspired by the way people in slums make stuff, make a living of garbage. There is this very inspiring little documentary about people in Paraguy who make instruments of trash and form a symphony orchestra called ”The Landfill Harmonics”.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0 

Or people in Indian slums who make a living of collecting plastic, mud, paper, all kinds of stuff … that we just throw out.

There is a BBC series about them called ”Welcome to India” that I loved watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpdoRUMeshw. There is a creativity there that we have forgotten. We have lost contact with that side of ourselves. That well of creative energy, that has kept us alive and developing for the past 30.000 years and that is now crippled by our new religion: consumerism.

So, what will I do with my phone? I don't know yet.

I might just tape it together for a while and let it die slowly, while I take my time to part with it and then I am sure, that I have friends who have old phones liking around, forgotten, that have been pushed out by a smartphone, and I could buy or barter, swap with them. I probably have something used lying around that I don't use, that I can part with in exchange. Finally the internet is good for many things and finding what we need by putting it out there is a wonderful option.

I recommend Amanda Palmers TED talk that sort of is about that.http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.html

It certainly is about finding other ways of living that don't just involve working our butts of to buy things we don't really need, to keep a standard of living up that is not only bad for our planet, but also for our inner environment.

We need challenge in our lives to keep alive and creative.

In our day it doesn't necessarily come easy, so we have to work a little bit to find challenges.

That's where the fun starts :-)