Black Friday

My office is a short walk from the biggest, most upscale shopping mall in Michigan. Once in awhile, I’ll take a break and a walk around the mall.

For most of my life, a place like a shopping mall inspired my aspirations. I would window-shop and, as I did, vow that I would someday be rich enough to buy whatever I wanted.

And then I would be happy. Someday.

Last week, I took an afternoon walk around the mall and what I felt there surprised me: Boredom. Exhaustion. Fear. Yearning.

Let me tell you about each of those feelings.

Boredom. As I’m getting into my forties, new stuff doesn’t seem that new to me anymore. I’ve been going to the mall for decades now and the more things change the more they stay the same. All the new stuff that promises to change things…doesn’t change anything. How much is that new smartphone really going to change my life? And they’ll come out with an even newer model in a few months anyway. New stuff doesn’t excite me anymore. I’ve seen it all. It’s boring.

Exhaustion. I’m tired of broken promises. Advertising has been making promises to me since I was old enough to watch Saturday morning cartoon. All of those promises? Broken. As I walk around the mall and look at the advertising seducing and shouting from every direction, I’m just tired. It’s not real. Not any of it. And yet it seems to take up so much of my energy to either pay attention to it or ignore it.

Fear. As I walk through the mall now, I feel fear. Yes, fear. I ask questions like: “Is this all there is to life? Is this really it?” I’m afraid of what this obsession with shopping is ultimately going to do to our society. And, I admit, in this age of terrorism (which may also just be middle age), I fear for my life (just a little). In those brightly lit corridors with their cheerful music, a a shadow lurks over everything.

Yearning. This is the big one. I used to yearn for the means to buy anything I wanted. Now that I’m bored, exhausted, and fearful of consumerism, I yearn for something more. But what? As a culture, we practice being consumers from almost birth. We’re born shoppers. In fact, yes fact, we believe that shopping is the answer to everything in life. We don’t even consider alternatives–or that there may be alternatives. So what happens when a 40-year old American consumer discovers one day that consumption and shopping are empty and lifeless? I yearn for something more, but I don’t even know where to begin looking for it.

I hope that Black Friday will take on a new meaning for us as we grow more mature and more wise: The death of the consumer delusion.

May Black Friday, then, mark our turn toward a resurrection of true humanity.

Grace and peace.