One nice unintended consequence of moving to Jordan has been stepping back from American consumerism. I used to think I was less effected then most, but really I was just as effected as anyone (I think like alcoholics the verb should be a present tense am instead of was). I test positive for the disease. Like Ed Norton in Fight Club, I too at least had found the perfect couch. I too told myself that no matter what else went wrong, at least I had the couch thing covered. I ended up selling that couch with my house. When I was on Semster at Sea, I actually had several nightmares about the couch getting damaged by the girl who rented my house.
Now everything I own sits on a 70 square foot slab of concrete somewhere in rural Oregon. In Jordan, Julie and I rent a furnished apartment and have no intentions on settling down here, so we don't buy things for the house. Another consumer vice of mine, electronics, cost about two times what they do in the US, and the selection at stores is very limited. Amman has no good bookstores, music shops, or camera stores. I have literally bought nothing tangible in the year I've been here. So my title for this post is a bit misleading. There was no weaning process. The tit was ripped out and I was forced to survive on my own. It isn't easy. There is withdraw. When a new lens or camera comes out and I know I can't get it, there is a melancholy that comes over me. Like a boyfriend helplessly trying to win back the affections of a lost lover, I sometimes take to forming crazy plots on how to bring a must have item to me. In the end though it is just a futile attempt to squash the hurt. And though I will always have to say with a trace of regret that "I am a consumer," it gives me peace to know a life without it, if only for a brief time.
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