Beginning with the Baby Boomers, we began to transition from being content
with what we have to a sense of being entitled to ever-expanding pieces of
the economic pie. We demanded more money, more things, more pleasure. Why
has the acquisition of "more" produced so much less - less contentment, less
happiness? When the income increases don't come fast enough to keep pace
with the want increases and pleasure is not constant, many complain and moan
about "hard times." Anyone who has not been through a Great Depression and a
world war has no reason to whine.
Most of our demands are a response to marketing. We are assaulted with
commercials and ads that assert our "need" for whatever it is they are
trying to sell us. When our income is insufficient to meet those newly
discovered wants, the spouse goes to work to help pay for them. The kids go
into day care, or its equivalent - ever earlier pre-kindergarten. When these
children display social malfunction, we find doctors to prescribe drugs to
soothe their legitimate anxiety.
With all of the gifts you've bought by now, maybe it's too late to accept
the state you're in and be content with it. But it isn't too soon to make a
New Year's resolution that next Christmas will be different. As the sales
figures pour in and the stock market reacts to whether this was a good or
bad economic year, ask yourself what your year has been like. Has more stuff
- or its pursuit - assuaged you? If not, maybe you were given the wrong
gift.
That's what Christmas is really about: the right gift. Receive THAT gift and
contentment will quickly follow.