Personal Praxis: eating at home and balancing luxury with starving people
Nov 25th, 2007 by nancyzimmerman
This is our last week of Eat at Home Month! Like most participants, I’ve fallen off a couple times, but got back on.
I’ve modified my original goal to account for my Real World (ie. I can eat out once/week on an ad hoc basis).
Several times I’ve reverted back to thinking ‘I’ll just grab a sandwich at a deli’ and then caught myself, made a lunch or supper, and I figure I’ve saved well over $100 bucks in just three weeks. Yahoo!
On the topic of food — I often struggle between what is indulging in luxury (and I have nothing against Audis!) and what material beauties I can feel good about owning/striving for, given the masses of human lives at stake because they don’t have nutrition or proper shelter. Tonight (enroute to the Coen brothers new movie No Country for Old Men, fyi) I lusted after a beautiful vehicle, with accompanying jealousy -nay, covetousness – towards the 20-something driving it.
I had this thought: what if I created a list of luxuries, ranging from $100+jean, dinners out, audis and permitted myself to purchase them only after first donating an equivalent figure to a social justice cause? What would happen if I lived this as a lifestyle? Would I feel a deep sense of satisfaction, or would my lifestyle be chronically hampered and I’d be bummed out?
I seriously don’t know how celebrities like Oprah or Brangelina handle this.
They give so much through their charities but then again, they have helicopter pads or whatever at their mansions. Is that really necessary?
But is it their responsibility to heal the world? Do they get bummed out or guilty?
As you know, this is something I struggle with. I believe in giving but I also believe in pulling yourself up from the boot straps.
yeah, I know Mariam. The way I think of it now is, could I gorge myself on a wonderful meal, if, right across the room for me, someone was scrawny and all bones and gaunt from malnutrition? I don’t think for a moment that there is anything wrong with wonderful, gourmet, exotic food, and enjoying it to the full … but I Can’t enjoy it to the full knowing someone else is at the other extreme. We just have the luxury of not seeing that scrawny person most of the time. I honestly don’t know the answer either. But I do seem to be heading in ever-increasing radical directions.
That’s very similar to what Paid Twice does (although with debt repayment for now, rather than social justice.) Seems to work well for her. Right now I’m tithing in time, not money, as I’m trying to get ahead on my student loan repayment, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind if/when that changes.
Sorry, to be clear, Paid Twice is http://www.paidtwice.com/