Black Friday vs the Season of Giving

Has anybody ever thought how messed up it is that on literally the same day that we celebrate how grateful we are for what we have, we go out and do physical damage to each other to gain more material possessions? Of course, everybody has thought that. Everybody knows that it makes no sense and that it’s not right. Yet each of us still participate every year, and each time it gets bigger and bigger.

Whatever happened to putting others before yourself?

Now, I’m not saying it’s bad to get good deals on things, especially if you’re giving away what you’re purchasing to others. I just think that our society is way too focused on money and material things of no importance, and we need to shift that focus. Often as a result of setting their hearts on material possessions, people of a society have to be taken down from their thrones and taught how to be humble again. To me, it looks like we are headed in that direction today, and unless we can turn it around ourselves, terrible things are going to happen.

Think about it. We have so many blessings and such an advanced society here today that nobody in the rest of the world or even in the history of the world have ever seen before. The technology we have is incredible. The means for transportation, communication, creating wealth and ending poverty; the means to educate ourselves on an infinite amount of subjects; these means are unbelievable! Why is the world not a better place right now? Why can’t each of us get off of an individual level and use what we have to create paradise? We have so many resources today that the world has never known. Imagine if Aristotle lived in our time, or Galileo; imagine if Thomas Jefferson lived in the twenty-first century, or if Isaac Newton was here today. What would they be doing with these resources? Each of them made a bigger impact on the world for good than any of us have. Just imagine the impact that they could have made in such an advanced society as this. Isn’t that incredible to think about? The point is, though, that we have so much in our society today that we don’t use just because we value lesser quests such as entertainment over life-changing pursuits such as knowledge.

If you want to succeed in making the world a better place, you have to be different from other people. You have to use your time and your resources to change yourself into the best person you can be. So often we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of life: things that are valued as significant, but really aren’t that important. We spend the bulk of our time working at a job or studying at a school, then coming home and thinking that it’s absolutely necessary to watch the ESPN highlights or listen to the new Beyoncé album; stuff like that. It’s important to be educated on what’s going on in the world, but it’s not important to keep up with what’s popular. Each of us; we only have one life to live. There are only 86,400 seconds in a day. How much of that do you waste? How much knowledge is out there on the internet or in the library that is never found because of Netflix or Twitter?

It’s incredible how much we take for granted in our world. This is especially the case in modern Western culture, and people don’t really talk about it. We don’t realize how big of a problem it is, and frankly, most of us don’t care. It’s no coincidence that there are higher depression rates in places where people have higher income and more sophisticated technology. When a person possesses so many things, not only are they ungrateful for those things, but they don’t realize what’s important to possess. So they go out in search of more and more: making more money, buying more material possessions, trying to increase their popularity, etc. It’s really all in vain. In reality, the answer is simple. All we have to do is remember what’s most important and put that first.

There are third-world countries out there where people have to use every second of their time and every drop of their resources just to stay alive every day. That’s how the world has been for thousands of years. And now, in this era where we have more time and more resources than anybody else ever to walk the Earth, how much of it goes to waste each and every day of our lives? If we can’t use the time we’ve been given wisely, then it’s surely going to be taken away from us.

So what are you going to do this holiday season? Will you use your time to help those in need? Will you spend your hours searching for good deals on material things? Will you remember the season of giving this year? Or will you only remember yourself? It’s your choice. But I encourage you to choose others, because I know that happiness comes from serving other people rather than using all of your time and energy on yourself. The world needs better right now, and that's what we're going to give it.