Happy Black Friday! (USA)

Greetings Shoppers! This is the annual day of your greatest influence on American society! While on other days you may be maligned, misunderstood, (taken to the cleaners), and called all manner of ugly names like "capitalist pawn", today (and only today) you are revered and worshiped by the mightiest leaders of American (and international!) business and finance. You are king/queen(/other) for the day! You alone (well, alone en masse) impact the profitability (for the whole year!) of businesses from the largest to the smallest. Even your tiniest contribution to this great commercial enterprise counts, so please do your part - for the good of merchandising everywhere!

Unfortunately, I, as your faithful cheerleader, can only stand on the sidelines today, and watch you perform your magic with pride and longing in my heart. If only I could stand with you, my heroes, on the sales floor, bustling and bargaining with plastic and paper - nay, even with bits and bytes, would I attack and slay the dragons of overpricing with online shopping! But alas, I have neither plastic, nor paper today, and all of my bits and bytes have leaked out of the holes I shamefully ignored for so long in my (now defunct) bank accounts and credit rating.

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No, but really - it's quite the interesting perspective, to actually be unable to participate in America's favorite shopping day; given that I've always had a "philosophical" resistance to doing so (as evidenced in sarcasm above). I'd be hypocritical if I gloated from some "moral" hilltop, when I know perfectly well I'd be in the fray myself if I could - and I'm out of the fray by my own hand. What I recognize today is that - good or bad - I am, and have always been, a part of the process, and have reaped all of the benefits thereof. That (commercial/industrial/financial) process is one reason I can sit here online in comfort and rail against its excesses.

So once again, the watchword for today is gratitude. Appreciating the good things that life (even the rampant commercialism embedded in our holidays) brings me - my connections with other people, and with God, who calls me to accept, with serenity, the way life is, rather than how I would make it. Realizing that a world designed by Paul, though that control would please him for a bit, would most likely be a nightmare beyond all reckoning (for example, my self-designed alcoholic nightmare). And that this "two-sided" blog post represents a personal paradigm shift for my built-in cynicism; turns out my cynicism (a character defect when used unwisely) can be a valuable thing when I turn it over with humility. Who'da thunk?

So shop if you will (and can), but do it with love and wisdom - I think that might just work.