‘Black Friday’ - a relatively recent American phenomenon that immediately follows Thanksgiving - has now unapologetically spilled over into many other countries in the Western world. Even here in Malta, a traditional Mediterranean island, there are special opening hours and discounts (plus huge transport disruptions) on this day. And of course in the world of online shopping, anyone can partake of Black Friday's offers - curiously, quietly, greedily. It’s a day that celebrates and feasts on mass consumerism, and which countless businesses feel compelled to participate in - even when they operate outside the cultural context of Thanksgiving. This year, the date is also ironically shared with ‘Buy Nothing Day’ - which, as it sounds, promotes the exact opposite values and behaviours to ‘Black Friday’. The discourse around all of this is conflicting: hype and excitement mixed with resistance and disdain. There are lots of opinions, and lots of counter-initiatives too. Upon reading about some of them, it struck me that this is a wonderful opportunity to think more about ethical buying and small businesses. It is also a chance to cultivate more consciousness and conversation on the force of consumerism. But all the attention surrounding ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Buy Nothing Day’ can also act as veils to perhaps a more important issue - materialism itself.
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We read and hear a lot about ‘busyness’ these days. People say - and feel - that they are busy all the time, and it is treated and accepted as a symptom of the age. The more we talk about it, tinged with a mixture of pride and apology, the more busyness becomes a kind of cultural narrative. It’s undeniable that life is very full for most people in today’s (at least Western) society. There are an intricate array of demands on our time due to the cost of living, raising families while maintaining jobs, less localised activity and therefore more travel, interacting with people across time and space almost constantly, and somehow trying to carve out windows for other interests, therapies and recreation too. Some individuals are also engaged in service-oriented activities that aim to help various populations, be it local or international. All of this is a far cry from life several decades ago, when everything was a lot more limited - in terms of where we could go, who we could communicate with, and what we could participate in. We knew less about the world, its problems, opportunities and needs; we simply had fewer options and less information to process.
I realised, after my friends started having children, that our conversations were different. They had all the zeal of intention from before - to share, to discuss, to analyse - but somehow they didn’t seem to bloom in the same way. I’m not referring to the content, but more to the lifespan and completion of a conversation. After my own daughter began to move and demand a little more of my attention than nursing or gurgling as I chatted away, I began to understand. Interruptions from little ones are sometimes sweet and lispy like the first patterings of rain at a picnic, and sometimes boisterous and unsettling like a thunderclap. But they are all a little frustrating because they interrupt the flow of something else which, at that moment, holds your focus more. Of course, my friends and I all accepted that it was simply more difficult now to have meaningful or prolonged conversations when the children were there. We began to ‘postpone’ them to evening phone calls and visits, when we were often tired but longing for some stretches of listening and talking in adult proportions. This is no revelation to anyone with young children, or to anyone trying to have a conversation with someone with young children. It’s fine, it’s a phase, and even a privilege. The revelation to me was that this pattern of interruption was possibly the most exhausting thing about motherhood.
Pregnancy with my second child has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s all relative, of course, and some may read this and wonder at how easy life must have been for me if this was hard. Some others may automatically want to remind me that this is ‘nothing’ compared to having two small children, or having three or four or five. But the fact is, it has been extremely challenging for me, and I’m sure in no small part due to having moved countries immediately before and to experiencing pregnancy through the hottest months of a Mediterranean summer. I have a lot more awareness now of respecting each person’s journey with motherhood, and not trying to compare or rank levels of intensity. For some, one child pushes them to their ‘full capacity’; for others, having ten or more children isn’t massively stressful. The thing is, we don’t need to remind each other that someone else has it harder or that your own situation is very ‘doable’ - we each have our own strengths and limitations. Motherhood will simply bear it’s own unique fruit for each person.
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