A View Without a Price Tag

The two things I remember most about the incident are a color and the movement of the people.

The color was beautiful and intense -- a pinkish, slightly purplish red.  I had never seen a sunset in which the color was more vivid.  Nor a sunset that covered such a vast portion of sky as this one did.  It felt as if it filled the entire western half of heaven.

The other thing I remember about the incident is the people.  I saw them silhouetted against the sky.  There were at least a dozen of them, and they were walking.

But here is what struck me:  Not a single person paused or even turned their head to look at the sunset.  They were instead all intent on their shopping expeditions as they walked from their vehicles to the mall, or from the mall back to their vehicles in the parking lot.  To all of them, it was if this gorgeous sunset -- a surge of redness with rippling clouds -- simply did not exist.  I do not mean to judge the people; I do not know the details of their shopping errands.  But I felt as if they were missing something that was more valuable than what is usually in most of our shopping bags.

Our society in the U.S. today seems more and more to tag us as consumers.  We may be hopelessly divided along Democrat-Republican lines, but we all shop.  Even during a recession, a question frequently asked on the news is whether or not we have begun shopping more again so as to stimulate the economy.

However, there seems to me to be a tension between basing one's sense of self on the ability to buy more desirable products, and placing ones trust and sense of wonder upon a divine Power that was around before there was human civilization.  This is why I am revived by turning my attention to Nature.

garden at
Wordsworth's childhood home

The poet William Wordsworth detected the negative connection between consumerism and an attention to Nature when, in his poem "The World Is Too Much With Us" he wrote:

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours."

Some of my happiest childhood memories are not of being in a shopping mall, but instead sitting with my family on a high lookout in Madison, Wisconsin, watching the sun slowly set.   Simply doing that provided something valuable my parents could never have bought.

~~~

Do you have a childhood memory of Nature?  Do you think there is a relationship between our society's attitudes towards Nature and toward consumer goods?

(To read Wordsworth's complete poem,

 click here: "The World Is Too Much With Us")