Revelations

Epiphanies are like light breaking into the darkness.  It is a revelation, a turning point, and often our lives take a different course after having one.

Waking up to the truth is an epiphany.  We wake up to what the messages of our culture are really saying.  We realize that our clutter is stifling us.  We realize that our consumption of goods and services are consuming our opportunities to lead the life we really want.

It is important to wake up to what the culture is telling us.  It is imperative to change our course.  The materialism of North America is not sustainable long term.  Not for us, and certainly not for the global community.

We are trashing the planet with our waste.  We are ruining our oceans and waterways with cast away plastics and pollution.  Our air quality is suffering from our emissions and our industry that makes...more stuff.

We are trashing our homes with things we don't really want or intend to keep long-term.  We decorate our bodies and our dwellings according to the latest trends.  Women's clothing changes four times a year, and major shifts in house decorating occur every few years.

We are trashing our finances by acquiring more and more frivolous and unnecessary purchases and rushing, rushing, rushing to keep up with the images presented to us from Hollywood.  We sell our souls to work to pay for all our nonsense, and become paralyzed in a vicious earn-buy-earn cycle.

It's time for an epiphany.  Realize that those advertisements rely heavily on many decades of psychological study geared to find out what will make you dissatisfied enough that you will buy the purple whatsamadoodle and its burgundy sister.  Realize that most people who seem to have the American dream are up to their eyeballs in debt, and some are worried about how they will put food on the table.

Wake up!  Don't be fooled any longer.  March to the beat of your own drummer.  Don't let the culture tell you what to do.  Buy what you need to buy.  Let yourself have a few wants.  Beyond that, live simply and lightly on this planet.

Simplify.