On consuming and creating, and the need to balance the two

We live in a consumerist society. No big revelation there. I think about this quite a lot, and the cyclical, never-ending promise it holds out: See something appealing or useful. Feel a wave of desire to have it, possess it, own it. Buy/Acquire it. Feel better in and about your life (for a quick minute). Get used to the new thing and watch its sparkly newness fade away. Stumble across the next bright shiny object thing. Feel a wave of desire to have it, possess it, own it… you get the idea. Rinse and repeat.

Like a lot of people, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that shopping has become one of our favourite pastimes. We’re fairly well-evolved creatures; surely we have other stuff we could be doing!

I watched the Minimalist documentary on Netflix a couple of years back, contemplated what it would be like to live like that, looked that the 333 clothes challenge (you wear 33 items for 3 months) and got a bit obsessed with the idea of living in a tiny house.

But the reality is, I’m not a minimalist, and don’t think I ever will be.

I don’t actually think consumerism is all bad. We are creatures designed to acquire a host of life experiences which we somehow digest and turn into some kind of output. No one ever says, “God, we humans are so greedy with how much oxygen we breathe!”, because that continuous process of consumption is inherent to staying alive.

The issue, I think, arises when all we do is consume, without creating things as well.

Just as we convert oxygen into carbon dioxide – input converts into output – so too are we at our best when we take in the experiences, environments and various forms of stimulation from the world around us and convert it into some kind of output, to complete the cycle in a way.

I’ve noticed for a while that if all I do is consume other people’s creations – art, movies, books, stories, music, and so on, much of it powerful, thought-provoking, moving and brilliant – without creating something from it or in response to it, I feel that same familiar blocked feeling that I get when I don’t write. It’s like all the stuff gets backed up inside me – creative constipation, if you will. And that shit needs an outlet. (I can hear you groaning! Yes, it’s a terrible joke!)

If we never pooed or weed, our bodies would be reeling! If all we do is read/watch/listen without doing something with it, our psyches end up reeling, too.

I think that’s part of what compels us humans to share things when we are moved or impacted by them. We have to do something with it, to tell someone about the experience as a way of digesting or ‘processing’ it.

As I have written a fair few times on this blog in the last couple of weeks, I wonder if you can relate.

I think this idea is important. It points to this core human need to CREATE, to make something of the things we experience, to turn input into output, to be an active participant in a world that is constantly unfolding and evolving, emerging and changing. It doesn’t necessarily matter how we do that – through talking and sharing, writing, taking photographs, making art, or somehow internally converting it into being in the world in a way that has been influenced by what we’ve seen. Theatre can crack our hearts open, and we decide to try to keep them that way; a song might rock us to the core, and we remember that feeling next time we encounter the kind of situation the song evoked for us; an article shows us a different way of looking at the world, and we try to hold it in mind the next time we’re in that same old dynamic.

Fundamentally, I’m talking about the need to balance what we take in with what we put out, so that we can be like a river that is flowing (or even a stream that is trickling), not a body of stagnant water that is all blocked up. Life, I think, is somehow meant to be lived that way.

(Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash. Thank you, Jon.)