By Amy Butler
I have too many things. I realized this just the other day. Standing in front of an empty closet I thought off-hand, “I could never fit all my stuff in here!”
Just one day back from a week-long trip to El Salvador, the arrogance of my own thought jarred me. Visiting that country with a group from my church, we met all different kinds of people who live in all different types of circumstances. Most of the living accommodations we saw do not include any kind of closet at all, much less a closet that would meet our space requirements.
We toured a neighborhood in San Salvador where families live as squatters in a large concrete apartment building that was severely damaged a few years ago in an earthquake. An architect in our group declined an opportunity to climb the stairs into the building, pointing out fissures in the concrete and stairways in precarious disrepair. One family of 10 adults shares two small rooms in the complex, along with two rabbits, a chicken and one dog. As far as I could tell, there were no closets.
We also visited a very remote area, where one of the young adults who participates in our Shalom Scholarship Program lives with his family. They graciously welcomed us to their home: mother, father and two young adults living in one room. The little hut had a packed dirt floor, hammocks tucked away during the daytime, no indoor plumbing and an open fire for cooking out on the front porch. Also, no closets.
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The disparity between these homes and the abundance of my own household brought back words of an economist who met with our group at the Jesuit University in San Salvador. Discussing issues of population migration — both from the standpoint of receiving countries like the United States and countries like El Salvador that are losing people from their population — we wondered aloud what economic policies might help with these trends. The professor explained to us it isn’t economic policies that need changing as much as people’s convictions and beliefs.
Thanks to media advertising and American consumerism, it turns out everyone in the world now wants a bigger closet. Those who already have big closets along with those who don’t have closets at all, we have all embraced the idea that happiness comes with an accumulation of material possessions.
The professor told us the solution to her country’s migration woes has to do with a redefinition of happiness. After all, the pursuit of material possessions is not the highest goal of a human life. How can she help her people to understand that investing in relationships, building community and embracing a vision are the things that ensure long-term stability, and not the accumulation of more things?
I wondered about the answer to that question. I wondered specifically how we possession-laden Americans could possibly help in this effort when we cannot even seem to change our own perspectives.
Since returning from El Salvador I’ve realized that my real problem is not that my closet is too small. It is that I have unwittingly adopted the philosophy that happiness and satisfaction come through possessions. The truth is, I could do with less stuff, and then I would be just fine with a smaller closet.
Faith and relationship, community and purpose, these are the kinds of “things” that really make life full and rich. It is true that some of the houses we visited in El Salvador didn’t have closets. Many, however, had things that cannot be stored in closets, the stuff of life that makes us truly rich.
We have big closets here, but I wonder what our lives would be like if we recognized the value of the real treasures that are in our lives.