Diagnosing TBA: The BUY Addiction

We buy stuff all the time. Some people have to buy something every single day, if not an item then at least a cup of coffee! They're not living if they're not entering into a store and spending some money.

Exercise: Count how many days a week go without buying anything, anywhere. If you buy something almost every day, or can't go out without buying something, then you know you're dealing with TBA!

Don't you think that I am immune to that! Hey, if I write about some problem, it's likely that I do or did experience it at some point!

Buying addiction is a serious problem in richer societies. It disturbs our inner balance as individuals as well as our global balance as a human community sharing one Earth.

We can see this global imbalance manifest in different ways:

1. Waste and surplus for some, starvation for many.

The rich societies that consume most of the resources contribute to a moral imbalance, which is a manifestation of injustice and selfishness. When food and cloths are thrown away in one part of the world, while hundreds of millions of humans can hardly eat, dress and find adequate shelter, something is grossly wrong.

Humans are meant to be one family with acceptable variations in wealth, but with a universal standard of dignity and availability of human needs for all, which our Earth naturally provides, if it wasn't for the shameful greed and selfishness of some.

2. In order to buy more and cheap, the poor have to accept labor slavery.

Because money seems to be the God of an overwhelming number of businesses, they don't see a problem meeting the needs of buyers for more and cheap by moving to poor countries where they can have labor camps. Humans who work most of their waking hours, in very poor conditions, for a pay that will barely help them survive. This imbalance is simply expressed in the fact that a worker could be paid in a week what we spend on a lunch for one!

All for the sake of us going into the store and buying a gadget that we might not use and didn't need in the first place, or for us to be able to buy 5 t-shirts instead of just one. Wow, what a progress, we can have all those t-shirts and shoes in all the different colors. Boy hadn't our life become much better with that!!!

3. More of the things that we don't need end up creating mountais of toxic trash, and heavily polluted Earth.

Because people buy things they don't need, they end up getting rid of them. In the worse manner possible: throwing them in the trash. Our addiction to keep buying stuff that we don't need lead to factories producing more unnecessary stuff. Because they want to make them cheap, they use toxic material that will keep the cost low. Then this satanic cycle end with landfills full of toxic waste that no one really knows why it was even created to start with.

We lost, the buyers. We lost money and inner peace. They lost, the workers. They lost their life and energy to the factories. It lost, our Earth, and our future. It became full of toxic waste. The only ones who gained are the businesses, only a minority. Are those guys worth all those losses and suffering?!!

The importance of staring at computer screens!

A lot of today's work is done in front of a computer. I spend most of my working day staring at a computer screen. We know it's no good for the eyes. Is what we do important enough to risk the comfort of our eyesight for it? That must be a good question!

Before computers, work was being done too. People used different tools. Phones and faxes. Faxes must have been revolutionary enough when they came out. How miraculous was puting in a piece of paper here and have it come out thousands of miles away!

At the time of faxes, no one would have imagined something like email. The future might very well be hiding some other tools that we can't now imagine. Those who dream those tools will make the strange realities of tomorrow. But that's how it's always been. Dreamers create the future. They know that things can be better. Conventional thinkers are slaves of the past and the status quo.

But I didn't answer the question about our eyesight, the computer screen, and the importance of our work! Well, we can just accept the status quo. Think that there is just no other or better way of doing things.

But I rather be a dreamer. That's why I know that we can do important and meaningful work, with the most effeicient, eyesight-friendly tools!

Growing in peace!

"Rush will bring about remorse; patience will bring about safety"

Arabic proverb

Change doesn't happen as quickly as we usually wish. I don't think we have a chance of introducing any remarkable improvements before we make peace with this fact. In nature, our best teacher, change happens gradually and surely. Every particular plant grows at its prescribed pace. The only immediate forces that introduce massive, major and quick changes are phenomenons like hurricanes and tornados; destructive forces! Growth happens softly, gradually, slowly, and takes its time. Destruction can transform, in one hour, what needed decades to be built!

We feel this peace when we are surrounded by plants and nature. These beings are in no rush for anything! But humans were not even happy with the pace of plants and animals in growing, they invented growth hormones! The cost of this rush and impatience is becoming increasingly obvious, and even scary at times!

In our individual as well as collective endeavors for improvement, we have no chance of survival without fully accepting that change takes time, and growth happens slowly. Otherwise we will either not make any positive and real changes, or end up with monstres coming back against us!

The World Happens Within!

Is the world ugly or beautiful? Is life exciting or boring? Are there enough interesting things to do out there or is living just meaningless?

Life is all that, all the time, and all in the very same moment! It just depends who's looking at it? Who's having the experience, and when!

For you and for me, we probably have experienced all those opposite views of life at some point. We're depressed, and the whole world becomes dull and boring and empty! Then we're happy, and we sing: It's a beautiful life!

This has only one indication, life is neutral! It has all possibilities, and it can be beauty or ugliness. It's our mirror, and will just reflect what we're projecting into it.

There are as many worlds as there are people. And they don't start far from us, the world is born in our heart and mind. It's all those pieces that come our way, and we can make them into an ugly chaos or into a piece of art! The human inner world is the most powerful of all, and it's the only that really exists, for every one of us, separately!

If the World happens within us, then we need to look inside when we look at life. If we say life is boring, we better realize that we really mean: We are boring! When we think it's limited, then we better know that we should expand from within!

The World is just a decision of the heart!

Life is too short, so?

The most common conclusion, as you may know, goes like: so we have to live it to the fullest! But I believe it's smarter to come to a more meaningful conclusion and truth, like: which means that, in the blink of an eye, we will be dead!

That doesn't mean pessimism, in any way. It just means realism and focusing on what really matters, and especially doing the right thing. It means letting go of our selfishness, because no matter how much pleasure or how much pain we had in this short life, they will have vanished once the soul leaves the body!

And why even think of death. Think of right now, right this moment, then think of all the pleasures and pains that you had in the past. Where are they? Completely gone! Of course anything that we're experiencing in the present seems too powerful for us to think that it will one day vanish, but it's the truth, and we know it for sure, from experience.

According to Aisha, wife of Prophet Muhammad, one day he came back home during the Eid Al-Adha celebration, the time of the year when Muslims sacrifice animals and have to give one share to the poor, one share to their relatives and neighbors, and keep the third to themselves. Muhammad asked his wife: "What remains of the goat?" She replied: "only one leg remains, we have given away the rest". There the Prophet corrected her: "All the goat remains, except the leg!"

It's not uncommon to hear someone talking about the joy of giving. Each one might have experienced it for her or himself. It's a universal human experience. And many times it's way greater that the joy of simply taking.

If life is this short, then we should just remember the fact, and work and live accordingly. We can live it to the fullest, but only as long as we're not harming or hurting. We should work for something bigger than our mere selves, and contribute to life and others as much as we possibly can. Because it will all vanish. And only our righteous deeds will remain forever for our joy and peace!

Whether we live within and for ourselves is not only about what truly remains. It affects our experience of life in the very present. It makes the difference between living in abundance or living in scarcity, from within. Selfishness is poor, giving and caring for others is rich and wealthy!

The risk of taking no risk!

I am not unfamiliar with taking risks. And I thank God for giving me the ability and willingness to take risks and have no or little fear. Sometimes it took me awhile to make the decision and get out of my comfort zone. The reward wasn't always immediate. And many times the road less traveled was long and hard, and felt like it was a dead-end. But I have no regrets.

I've seen people who didn't take risks, and may be they avoided much of the trouble that I faced, but their lives remained the exact same for long years; as well as people who ended up having more trouble because they didn't take the risk of change. My hardships gave me experience, strength, and independence, and they were a good test. Many times I felt that I failed, but I am glad I never saw myself panic, even at times when, for example, I had enough money only for a few days ahead, with no income, and no familiar face anywhere close by. I always knew that God will bring about a solution, even if at the last minute, and He always did! I considered my time with no money and no source of income as a forced vacation! Free time that I wouldn't have dared to give to myself if I still had the job. Don't take me wrong, I never got fired from any job, but it's a long story!

I can't see the ability to take risks without faith in God. God doesn't want us to be stupid, but he doesn't want us to be cowards neither! He put us on Earth and He alone prescribed a time for our leaving, so death shouldn't be an issue. And, as the prophet Muhammad once put it, God feeds us the way He feeds birds, they leave their nests with empty stomach, and return to it, at the end of the day, with their stomach full. Our share of money, health, and everything else is all planned up there. One Muslim sufi said it so beautifully, so many centuries ago: don't preoccupy yourself with what is created and guaranteed for you, rather preoccupy yourself with what you were created for! Meaning: don't worry. God created you to work and earn good money that involves no harm and no deception, and He created the outcome for you. No worries. But He also created you to be righteous, to change things for the better, to try to fix injustice when you see it happen, you're created for those tasks that a real human is worthy of undertaking! Don't then forget what you're created to do for mere food, money and safety. Your food and money are all created for you already, and they will come. Remember, you don't really make the money. You could be stuck right at this moment with millions of people who don't have enough food for the day, don't have a roof over their head, and live in places that have no paved roads, no electricity, etc. Be one of them and show me how you'll make the money, brilliant!

Even when I took the risk of leaving religion and my native faith to be more true to myself, God was still there, because I was certain that if He existed, then He supports me in trying to be more honest. He is The True (one of the 99 beautiful names of God) and He supports all our efforts on the path of truth, even if, on the surface, we seem to be straying away from Him.

Risk was the only way anything changed. Major changes in world history all involved major risks, taken by brave people. Risk is also optimistic. I know it. I might seem to be depressed for long times, but guess what, if deep within I wasn't a true optimist, I would never have taken any risk. We take risks because there is a picture in our heart of how things should be, and our optimism that it can happen is the only reason we do those seemingly stupid actions. Once I was so tired of the place I lived in and I decided to move out. I had a car with an engine that smoked heavily every time I drove it. No one believed that it could go a hundred miles away. I drove it from upstate NY to Washington DC, and from there to southwestern Florida. I embarked on this trip with enough money to get me to my destination, with no room for anything unexpected, including any kind of car trouble! Even though I always give advice to my friends to give room for the unexpected in their financial planning, I didn't feel stupid, I just had a strong feeling in my heart that God would not put me into trouble that is beyond my ability to handle. Only in Florida did the brakes completely disappear, but I had reached my destination and I could deal with this trouble safely! Had I stayed, I would have been more safe, but my life would have stayed the same. The story of my risks is a long story, and I might share more of it some day.

I always wanted to change the world, and felt that it was possible. My seemingly fruitless risks were a necessary exercise. No athlete wins the Olympics with no training!

Build, Before You Spend!

That’s the golden, yet simple rule for financial freedom. It’s a principle that this great country lives by its exact opposite. We spend what we don’t have. We borrow money from others (banks) to buy stuff for ourselves. Just for a moment, think of this scenario as if the bank was your friend. You like a new shirt, or desire a yummy steak at your favorite restaurant, so you go “borrow” money from your friend to buy it. Can we see ourselves do that? I guess not, it sounds insane, even indecent and irresponsible, as long as we don’t do it out of necessity. Who will ever say that we can’t live without a brand new car, a fancy dinner every week, and new cloths every couple weeks! Well, only those who don’t have a clue what “real life” is will say so!

In the famous book “The Millionaire Next Door”, one of the noteworthy characteristics that the author found common in self-made, first generation millionaires is that they live “below their means”. Not only they don’t spend what they don’t have, they actually don’t even spend “all” that they have. And that’s how they could build real wealth that ends up liberating them from money. They might live a simpler life, and others, who heavily rely on their high incomes to qualify for big credit, live a more sparkling life, dwelling in more expensive homes and driving luxurious cars. But the first group lives a simpler, yet comfortable life that is “theirs”, while the latter lives a luminous life that doesn’t really belong to them. They are at risk of loosing it every month, even every day. If their big fat paycheck stops, their ill-founded life falls apart. This is indeed a sure prescription for stress and the inability to truly taste and enjoy what we “think” we own.

I recently heard from a friend about a pilot who committed suicide. He got laid off, and obviously couldn’t find another job with a similar income. He gave up on life once he was hit and paralyzed by his finances falling on his head. He must have relied too much on his big pay, borrowing heavily to buy a nice house and new cars, etc., the typical scenario. Had he waited and lived “within”, not even below, his real means, he wouldn’t have ended up in trouble. He could have rented a nice place to live, or bought a reasonable house, used his big pay to save money while living comfortably, and his life would look very different by now. He’d probably be having enough savings to cover all his expenses for a long time, until he figures something out. He was one of the millions of victims of the norm. I wish more of us humans were strong enough to go against the norm, when it’s not really normal, if we just use some common sense! When enough of us do that, soon we will change and restore the norm to a more normal and harmonious state.

I like this advice from Suze Orman, even though I myself am nowhere close to it at the time of writing this. She suggests that we should have enough savings to cover our expenses for 6 months. That’s the first financial foundation we should build on. If your paycheck brings you a decent sum every month, I’d even say it’s safer to start by building enough savings for one year in case you lose your job. Six months sounds good, but we all know that life is UNPREDICTABLE. Yes, in capital letters, because I want it to look you bigger in the eyes! It’s one of those obvious facts that we tend to forget.

Well, I do think that the system itself is not going the right direction. We have seen what happened in the last years in the US market, and how many people lost their homes. I don’t think it’s even fair that you make payments for your house, then lose everything once you can no longer afford to pay. Buyers make mistakes and buy things they can’t really afford long-term. Buying a house is really a long-term commitment, mortgages going for 15, 20 or 30 years. We need extra caution when committing to something this long. However there is something wrong with the system itself.

In Islam, interest is strictly forbidden. I do believe that the Islamic rules are divine and meant for the ultimate, long-term good of both individuals and societies. Interest is a passive and abusive profit. We need no proof; those who got caught in debt know it too well. It’s hard to get out, and it enslaves the borrower to his ever-increasing debt. I do think that we can use the rule of “no interest” with the lessons of modern economy, and we can come up with the best formula. We need a just economy and just profits. No one can go wrong with justice, because it’s a win-win. In the meantime, we individuals have to start by our own selves. You don’t have to believe that interest is evil, because you might not believe in the Islamic teachings as I do. But we can all believe that it’s always better to use what we have. We can easily believe that buying a house or a car that we’re not sure to afford over time is like living in the house with no roof over our heads. It will get damaged with the first storm, and we’d even loose what we already paid in the walls and the furniture, thinking that the storm will wait for us until we can get to that roof and build it!

Build the whole house first, then move in and enjoy it! Now it’s really yours.

What's in Chicago's Trash!?

The problem is not only Chicago, so I hope my new city will take no offense at the title. Yes Chicago is now my new, or current city. I do like you, you’re big and lively. Yes you don’t have as much nature and greenery as my previous town of Ithaca, NY, but you can’t ask everything from everyone. However, in my heart I do know and feel that we humans can do things much better than how we’re doing them now, but that’s life. We make mistakes, then struggle to learn from, and correct them. It is all possible to have a big, lively and green city. And it is indeed possible to have a big, lively city that is also good friends with our biggest home, Planet Earth. But we are a little too far from this one.

I do like you Chicago, but you know what, my previous little, limited town of Ithaca had something superior. Something you’ll have to work a little harder to achieve. I don’t know if you’re even thinking about it, and that’s the scary part. We all know it, the ill who falls into the illusion of being healthy is blindly walking toward the edge... You know the rest!

Ok you need to know how little Ithaca is superior. Let’s forget about the lakes, waterfalls, and green hills. It’s none of your fault if you don’t have all that, really. I would be silly to blame you for it. I can only bring to your attention the things that you can control, because this is where your, and everyone’s responsibility begins and ends.

Ok, I am going to tell you now. Ithaca made it easier for its residents to, well, recycle! You will say but everyone can recycle in Chicago, just do your research. I won’t argue with that. Conscious citizens will take the effort to recycle. But here is the sad part, the world can’t afford to rely on aware and conscious citizens alone any more. Unless they lead and make THE decisions. But we all know it, decisions are not always in the hands of the selfless. Well, not even half of the time. May be less. Definitely less!

And most people are too busy with their daily lives. Many of them struggle to make money, then struggle to spend it! Where will they find the time to think about the air they breath! How can they have any time to worry about the far future of Planet Earth. You know, for us humans, even 10 years from now is “far future”! We work five days a week, after work we need to have dinner, go grocery shopping, may be watch some TV and hey, we need to sleep and have some rest. Then comes the weekend, we need some relief, may be the movies, dinner out or something. Remember also that our mental energy is used up already by our mortgage, new car loan, and credit card bills. How in the world can any one expect us to worry about luxuries like the environment!

See, Chicago, I won’t be any longer, but we just need recycling to be more easily accessible. You are like our mother, you have to force us to do what’s good for us. That’s what good parents do. If they suspect their kid is doing drug, destroying their mind and body, they wouldn’t just tell them drugs are bad for you, if you want I will take you to rehab. I am always ready to help you once you decide to! Oh what an open minded parent would that be! Truth is a good parent in such situation will take their kid to rehab BY FORCE. Then the kid will be grateful later on. Yes the kid will hate them at first, think they are arrogant and controlling.

We need big cities like you Chicago to be arrogant and controlling. Force us to do the right thing, because if you don’t, we will hurt our mind and body, our future, and the future of our kids. And even you, at the end, will not be far from great harm. Believe me, your very existence is at risk!

Why don't we do what's good for us!?

I always knew that reading a good book is good for me. I knew it from real experience. Yet sometimes I waste a month, or more, without opening a book. A few days ago I picked a book from my library, mostly unread, and started reading it. I was delighted as I went from page to page. I was inspired. Good words have a sort of spiritual, clean energy that goes right to where our higher self resides. They speak to the best in us. Every human has the possibility of moving between lower and higher levels of being, between the best and the worst of one's self:

"ِAnd by the soul and how He formed it, and inspired it its own rebellious evil and its piety! The one who purifies his soul succeeds, and the one who corrupts it fails"
Quran 91:7-10

Even though I knew it, there comes long periods of time where I don't attempt to do myself good by reading a valuable book. But when I do get myself to do it, I just wonder: why in the world did I waste all this time without reading anything! Why did I waste all this time (or all this life! time being life, and not money!), not doing what's good for me! At times we can't help but re-confirming that we are our own worst enemies!

The best promise I can make to myself is this: I will always have a book to read. There are too many great books for one life-time anyway, and we are even wasting much of this one life??!! How insane that is!

However a good book is not worthy just because it's good in itself. Books are ideas conserved and communicated in words. And ideas change people, then people change the world!

We're indeed here only to change the world and make it, along with our own selves, better. And again, there are too many things in the world to change and reform for one life-time anyway, and we're wasting this one life not even thinking of ways to reform it!

The least we can do for those who are suffering the unbelievable cruelty and injustice of some people is to care and think. Yes, think. Of what's happening, how it happened, and how to change it. Thoughts are energy. Didn't you hear that you should be careful what you think, because it might just come true!