This past weekend as I was driving through an old neighborhood of my youth I saw that a giant new "Container Store" had been built. (That's the name of the store, "The Container Store.") It occurred to me then that if one of my grandparents, who had lived through the Great Depression, have seen the store they would have marveled at the fact that we now have so much "stuff" that we need a store dedicated to holding all of this stuff.
The issue was further highlighted later in the day when my 10 year-old daughter returned from a birthday party with a gift. The gift was modest — it was a water bottle — but I couldn't but help but cringe at this spiraling problem of gift inflation. Apparently, it is no longer enough to give a gift to the birthday boy or girl, parents of birthday kids are now reciprocating with gifts to the gift-givers.
Many people may see this as a nice "problem" to have and, of course, it is great news for the Container Store; but what is it teaching our children?
I want my children to learn that the real gifts of friendship are those of listening, compassion, understanding and, quite simply, spending time with a person you enjoy.
In order to facilitate this understanding, I propose that if you are in the habit of giving gifts to the gift-givers you unlearn this habit. All this stuff is not only cluttering our houses, it is cluttering the minds of our children and deflecting their attention from those things which are truly important.
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