Due to some unforeseen circumstances, all of my writing energy lately has been directed elsewhere. I hope to start writing here again in the next two or three weeks, but until then I will be “airing reruns” from the past five years.
This one was originally posted February 10, 2007.
I have been working retail for the past four years, putting myself through school and gaining valuable insights into the human nature. From day one at Hy-Vee back in 2003, all the way to Target in 2007, it has been for me nothing more than a means to an end. I needed a job to help out with college expenses, and they needed a faithful worker that they could underpay, and that was the extent of our relationship.
I knew from the start that I could never actually make a career of it. It was just a feeling I got when I thought about myself in ten years, still putting cans on shelves and showing customers where the macaroni is. But I never really understood why.
Last week I brought my 1910 hardcover copy of Pensées to work so I could read it during my breaks. With all the wedding planning, and working two jobs, I haven’t had much time to read. (I started it way back in July.) And as I sat reading a book that was printed nearly a hundred years ago, filled with words written before 1662, it hit me all at once that I was holding the oldest thing that has ever been inside the walls of the building.
Target rotates the sales plans about every three months and clearances out all the “old” merchandise to make way on the shelves for whatever new items are coming in. There isn’t a single thing in the whole store that is more than a year old. Even the building itself was constructed in 2001.
I finally realize that this is why I have always hated retail so much. Its sole focus is new. Something that is three months old must be replaced with something new because it’s not new enough. If a package is opened, we can’t sell it because it’s not new anymore. Old stuff doesn’t sell very well, isn’t popular enough, so it has no place there.
When Paul went to Athens to proclaim Christ, the city’s residents were described in this way: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” When I hear my coworkers spend most of their conversations talking about the latest movie or a new restaurant, I realize that things haven’t changed much. We are a consumeristic society: We consume newness, in the form of new ideas, new products, new news.
What a contrast: God spent a fifteen hundred years writing a book in such a way that it would stay applicable for at least two thousand more, having no need of a replacement until everything in its pages has come true.
I put in my two weeks’ notice at Target last Saturday. I start work at SMART Public Safety Software down on Main Street in Cedar Falls on the 19th… I guess I just needed something new.
I loved this! I feel the same way, and even more so since your dad died. An event like that makes you realize where your treasure really is, and what really matters is definitely not new Stuff.
I think I spent a good share of my adult life collecting new Stuff to try to impress people who probably never even noticed my new Stuff. But collections get old and then you’re left with a bunch of old Stuff that you can’t get rid of but that you spent good money on. And you just wish you had the money back that you spent on that old Stuff, cuz it isn’t worth nearly what you paid for it anymore. So you donate it to a resale shop, or sell it on EBay and have little to show for your Stuff.
I still have a house full of stuff, but it’s old stuff, because I seldom buy new Stuff. —Except for those 100 year-old books that I buy from time to time off EBay. They enrich me spiritually and give me lots to think about.
They also help to remind me that there really is nothing new under the sun. Preachers from the 1800’s were saying that we were living in the last days because people were spending way too much time on entertainment and not enough time with God, and there were natural disasters occurring, and families were falling apart. Hmmm. Sounds kind of like what I heard on the news last week.
This desire for the new expands into the spiritual realm as well. Christian book stores have the Plumber’s Bible and the Nurse’s Bible and the Cat-Haters Bible. (They need one!) And they also have a bucket-load of books on how to do church the New Way.
Everywhere we look are those messages that the old is not good enough and we should not be content with it. —That’s so far from what the Bible says. It’s filled with encouragement to be content with what we have: our job, our spouse, our car, our house… And how godliness with contentment is great gain.
Even though I don’t buy much that’s new, I have to confess that I splurged the other day. I bought a near-new comforter from a consignment shop and I am currently painting the guest room so that when you and Amanda come stay with me in a couple of weeks, you will have a new room. I hope you’re impressed with my new Stuff… :>)