“Can we glitter together?

on this night with the candles flickering

Beckoning us to celebrate this long day

of

Capitalist ecstasy?”

So I just got off the phone with my grandmother, who informed me that though I receive disability for a whole host of mental health problems I developed after dropping out of college, I should get a job to show my worth.

My starving writer’s jaw simply dropped to the ground. Me, a job? The corporate world and I have intertwined at various times in the past few years, but I must say after becoming low income after dropping out of college, I’ve put being money centered aside in favor of a much more “amor,” or love centered way of being.

”you should get a job and go to work each day and be paid for what you’re worth!” My grandmother demanded. I have no problem with money, making it, receiving it or being on the low end of receiving it, as of late, yet I often question lately why we are still all so concerned with keeping up with the Jones’s.

It’s a well known Buddhist concept to stray away from material possessions in a tendency called being a “physical materialist.” Physical materialists must buy all of the latest things, in an effort to make and receive as much money as possible, with focus only on the material gain.

The famous Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa says that if you want to lead away from physical materialism: perhaps only because you don’t want to get knocked over by that screaming mother of four on Black Friday when you try to purchase that last TV at Walmart over the holidays?: and the solution to being a physical materialist if you so choose is compassion.

Compassion is so needed in today’s society. Not only compassion for others, but compassion for self. There’s a Buddhist way to look at compassion that requires more explanation — check out the fabulous book “Work, Sex, Money” by Trungpa — but the take away point is that we should always remain open and learning, not so mindless in our pursuit of possessions and material wealth.

so, buy that Hallmark card. And when you buy the latest one, or that TV from Walmart, make sure you keep an open mind to all of life’s struggles, whether your own or someone else’s, even a stranger half a world away.

The problem with capitalism, in my friend’s words, is that society is constantly creating a need for more “stuff.”

Stuff is great. But isn’t it amor or “love” that makes the world go round?

peace, love and compassion.