LEDs

There’s a Sesame Street music video about the letter B that plagiarised the Beatles song, “Let it Be”. Of course, the lyrics to the Sesame Street version went along the lines of: Letter B, Letter B, Letter B, Yeah, Letter B…  And I think they may have gotten in big trouble for infringement of copyright. (Of course, that was the first and last time an American program ever stole anyone else’s ideas. )

What’s this got to do with Christmas? Well, I retired our old set of Christmas tree lights last year, you know the ‘old fashioned’ sort with the cord in a circuit, and if one bulb is blown or missing, the whole line of lights doesn’t work. How frustrating! …And really hard to untangle and then position on the tree when it’s a circular pattern.

So I invested in a cheapie set from a cheapie shop that must have cost all of $10 and has LEDs or Light Emitting Diodes. These are wonderful, and bright and also have a little control box that can produce half a dozen different flashing and fading patterns. So now we are in Christmas light heaven, using very little power and with great visual effects. I feel like singing: LEDs, LEDs, LEDs, LEDs, shining all around us, LEDs….oohhh!

But I don’t. Well, not out loud, anyway.

So that’s the bit about LEDs. I could say more but I’m in the middle of a Christmas card/last-minute-forgotten-present frenzy coupled with the end-of-a-cold-sinus-congestion, so I don’t really have the energy to string too many words together in a sensible sentence, or even in a sentence that doesn’t make sense. Say that three times quickly.

So in lieu of anything radical to say, I’ll follow in the plagiarising theme and post something I’ve already written before, adapted from an article I had published way back in 2007:

More?

My daughter Jessie is just learning to talk. When she wants something to eat, she no longer points to it with a pleading look in her eyes – she can ask for it. She does this by saying “More?” Initially she learned this word when she had eaten her meal and we offered her another serving, asking, “Do you want more?” Now she associates the word ‘more’ with any request for food, be it first serve or second serve.

I found it funny that she has mistaken the word ‘more’ to mean ‘food’. How can she ask for more, I thought, when she doesn’t have any in the first place? But then I realised - perhaps her limited grasp of the English language points out a profound truth. She knows she is not starving: she has 3 meals a day, plus morning tea and afternoon tea. She is not really lacking for sustenance on a global comparison. Plenty of children in poor countries are blessed if they can have one meal a day. So although Jessie hasn’t even started lunch, whatever food she eats after breakfast is surplus or supplementary: ‘more’.

We live in a land of plenty. Even those on government pensions and social security payments, although finding it a struggle, will not starve. ‘Comfortable’ income earners complain about taxes and debts (mostly self-inflicted), yet they have clothes to wear, and a roof over their heads. The majority of advertising on television and in the magazines, in glossy catalogues shoved in our mailboxes, promotes things we don’t need. If we needed it so badly we wouldn’t require advertising to persuade us to buy it. 

Most of the commercials entice us to buy items of decadence – surround-sound entertainment systems, the latest fashion clothes and accessories, wide-screen plasma tv screens, broad-band internet connections, mobile phone ring tones and wallpapers, a plethora of household appliances and gadgets, prestige cars which cost as much as a cheap house in a country town…. The excesses are sinful.

How confident would we feel explaining our budget to someone in a developing country where basic health care is not guaranteed? …That we destroy our health through our indulgence in sugary, high-fat foods with no nutrition, leaving lettuce and beans to go mouldy in the crisper drawer of the fridge - while many people don’t even get regular meals of rice or beans? 

…That we get fat from sitting around entertaining ourselves with X-boxes, DVD’s, computer games, and chat rooms, escaping only to drive to the corner shop for junk food and the Sunday paper - while many people, including children and pregnant women, have to work long hours every day just to earn a minimum wage?

Or how do we explain that we live in a society where boutique shops to discount clothing stores expect consumers to buy a new wardrobe of clothes each season – whereas only several decades ago, the only good clothes a person owned was their church outfit? Most of the western world’s clothes are made by labourers in developing countries, for negligible wages in arduous working conditions. Why? Do we need more clothes? Aren’t there enough clothes in second-hand shops and many tonnes languishing in boxes in women’s cupboards and spare rooms?

This addiction of needing more – more treats, more entertainment, more convenience, more items to feed our pride and sense of acceptance amongst our peers – is blinding us from the amazing things we already possess. Are we thankful for the blessings we have now, and have had in the past? And not just material blessings, but emotional and spiritual blessings? Do we really need more… or do we have a rich life already?

 

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