Consumption

I've recently read two pretty interesting books: _Affluenza_, about the enormous, obscene amounts Americans consume, and _Mountains Beyond Mountains_, a biography-type book about Dr. Paul Farmer, a doctor whose work in Haiti basically points out the enormous, obscene amounts of money Americans waste that could save millions of Haitian lives. The first book is not so great, I don't think (it reads like the "based on a PBS special" book that it is and doesn't give a lot of new ideas ). This second book, though, is really, really troubling and absorbing. Read it, you all, and tell me what you think. Farmer sounds like a really complex, interesting guy, and the point of his life's work is that medicine _is_ political and that to you can't only treat the illness (TB, for example, in Haiti) without also treating the causes: poor water supply, inadequate food, and so on). It's a book that helps me continue to reflect on the US's role in foreign affairs and how our tax dollars do, in fact, affect real lives in real places.

These thoughts were tumbling around in my head yesterday as we drove around looking for houses. I have this problem--perhaps it's American, perhaps it's middle-class, I don't know. I want a simple house, and yet I want enough space for my two kids and frequent visitors. I'd like a small yard--doesn't have to be a lot. We *love* this community and the idea behind it--Hidden Springs--but to get into it, we'd basically have super-duper high house payments and no money for the furniture we'd need for this kind of cool house. But oh, the neighborhood: it's still just a middle-class thing, and it feels a bit "disney-fied" since it's so new--but the houses are each pretty different from each other and have the kinds of details missing in so many of the other housing developments in our price range: cool front doors, interesting porches, garages in the back, a common garden, a pool you can walk to, etc. So, on the one hand, I think this kind of housing development is trying to be better than the average one. And yet, it's pretty expensive--that is, despite their talk of wanting a mix of incomes, you're not going to find a lot of lower-income folks able to make a mortgage on a $350,00+ place--and it's out of the city, so folks will do a lot of driving into work.

So I was feeling sorry for myself last night that we found a cool spot and very likely might not be able to live there. And then I remembered that I'm looking at houses whose garages are twice as big as the average Haitian's house.

And I tried, really hard, to not feel the "how can everyone else afford it but we can't" feeling. That's my one goal for this week: to be content with what we can afford; to make a life wherever we are; to be overwhelmingly in awe of the excessive riches of this country that I benefit from.