Treadmills

Treadmills are a great invention.  You can still run when you don’t want to run outside when the temperature is negative 20 or it’s raining cats and dogs.  You don’t have to worry about cars hitting you or about tripping on uneven sidewalks.  And running on a treadmill allows you to train at the precise speed, time intervals, and incline you want to train at.

But treadmills aren’t perfect.

Treadmills can be very dangerous.  Perhaps you have seen video clips of people falling off treadmills or young people doing stupid things on treadmills.  If you haven’t seen these clips (or if you just need some comic relief) you can check out this video on YouTube.  Funny, but I know some serious injuries have happened on treadmills.

Imagine you are running along on a treadmill at a comfortable pace.  However, you soon realize that the treadmill speed has been slowly increasing to the point where you can barely keep up.  You are running on the end of the treadmill desperately trying to stay on the treadmill, you take each step with resolve and apprehension hoping to stay on but knowing the edge is right there…

This situation can end one of three ways.

You fall off the treadmill. 

You manage to reach the controls and slow the treadmill to a speed you can handle.  

Or you reach the controls and you turn the treadmill off because you realize that despite all your effort and desperation you haven’t even been going anywhere, at least not anywhere where you want to go. 

Many of us in the U.S. are on a treadmill, a treadmill of trying to acquire “stuff.”  Some call it “affluenza.”  We work and work and work so we can buy more and more and more stuff.  We neglect family and friends.  We devote our time to work so we can have more money to spend on more stuff that in reality we don’t even need.  We can’t break the cycle and we don’t dare jump off the treadmill for fear of failure and embarrassment.  And in the end we come to realize that we are even less satisfied with life than when we got on this treadmill.  It’s exhausting.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  The insanity and obscenity of Black Friday (and now Thanksgiving night) and Cyber Monday doesn’t have to be the norm.  We don’t have to continue running at rapid speeds exerting energy we don’t even have anymore.

This Tuesday we all have the opportunity to celebrate a new holiday: Giving Tuesday.  According to #GivingTuesday’s website, #GivingTuesday is “a campaign to create a national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season. It celebrates and encourages charitable activities that support nonprofit organizations.”  Hundreds of businesses, non-profits, other organizations, and individuals are joining together for this campaign, and I’m super excited to see the results.

I encourage you to participate in #GivingTuesday: give your time, give your resources, give what you can.

But one day isn’t going to change the culture of the affluenza treadmill.  It’s going to take 365 days a year of people rejecting our consumerist society.  It’s going to take millions of people choosing to do things differently.  It’s going to take people making choices that are hard but choices that affirm that there are things in life that are more important than getting that doorbuster deal on the latest electronic gadget. 

It’s going to take you and me making choices that affirm that we have already been given much, we have more than enough, and we can do so much by giving to others.  We are going to have stop buying what “they” say will make us happy and start giving what we know will create positive change in our lives, in our families, in our communities, and in our world.

May you find the strength to reach for the controls of the treadmill you are on, to take a look at where you are going, to recognize when you are about to fall off, and to slow the speed or turn off that treadmill you are on.  Then may you find the satisfaction of traveling along a new path of living life without the burden of consumerism or “stuff” and find far more than you ever thought you would have.