I recently read a disturbing article on what kind of damage can happen to your eyes when you spend a lot of time outdoors and don't protect your them from sunlight, both direct and reflected light. I spend time outdoors regularly so I had a vested interest in the information.
Last week my wife and I went to the mall in hopes I could find a pair of shorts to replace the pair I ripped furiously recently (from the end of the pant seam to the crotch. don't ask how). After finding some shorts, I was reminded that I haven't owned a pair of sunglasses in quite a while, so with the article bouncing around my head, we stopped in a hip clothing place to see if I could spot some shades I liked.
The tricky thing is this: I have a "connection" for discounted sunglasses through a friend, so shopping for sunglasses always feels a little weird, because I have no interest in making an actual purchase, just finding a style I like.
The guy behind the corner immediately spotted us eyeballing the locked plastic case of sunglasses and hurriedly bee-lined over. Upon unlocking the case, he confessed that he liked the brand I preferred, in fact, he "had that one in every color, and a few pairs of that one too. I have a few of those down there, and I hardly ever wear this one". This would bring his personal inventory to somewhere around 15.
In that moment, I thought 3 things:
1. Wow. What in the world do you do with 15 pairs of sunglasses? Storage alone would be a nightmare.
2. This guy's personal sunglass warehouse is diminishing what little desire I had to own a pair of sunglasses. He probably meant the opposite effect, by luring me in with his confident purchases.
3. If I could figure out this guy's address, I could take one pair, and he would be none the wiser. How can I get his drivers license out of his pocket and in plain sight...of course if he was 15 pairs of sunglasses, he might have lots of other things, like guns or rottweilers.
I quickly sorted through the display models and found one that got the thumbs-up from my wife. We made a mental note and left.
On the way out to the car I found myself doing a personal inventory of all the things I had in multiples: pants, shoes, cereal bowls, televisions, vehicles. Then a list of questions came streaming through my mind:
What do I have that I really need?
Who do I know that needs something I have plenty of?
Do I see what I have as belonging to God?
Is anything I have that I want keeping me from having what I really need?
Thoughts on your own personal stashes?
DZ
2 comments:
we have a lot of computers, keep in mind that we both grew up in the Silicon Valley and my husband is in IT and loves computers! I have had my own computer since I was in early elementary school. I didn't realize how rare that was until I grew up. We currently each have a laptop, the girls have a desktop they share, we have a laptop upstairs and at least 2 other laptops that just need some minor tweaking to be up and running again. Wow that is a lot of computers, even for us!!
We talk about this subject a lot too. At what point are we helping ourselves too much and not helping others enough. You could go to the extremes very easily. I really don't know what the perfect middle road is. I suppose everything in moderation...and love your God and your neighbor. The Holy Spirit will let us know when we have too many sunglasses and are going overboard. When we moved to Germany, we got rid of a lot of stuff...so we currently don't have too much of anything...I'll have to think about that one. :)
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