A Bite Of The Apple

October 2, 2005

Listening to music is one of life’s great joys and gives us a medium of consolation, enjoyment and connection with others who make music and who share our pleasure at hearing it. In the past few years, this medium has become more and more available to us, so much so that we can carry around all the music we might ever wish to hear in our pockets. It began with the Walkman and cassette tapes and cd’s, and progressed to digital music which now stored on tiny devices which can be carried in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

More annoying, however, has been the constant appearance of smaller and, allegedly at least, better devices to carry one’s store of tunes whilst walking down the street. What irritated the guest of a wedding reception I attended recently was that she had bought what was the leading edge of product only six months ago only to find that it is now a dinosaur and she with it. The new device is the One To Have and those who have gone before and consigned to the dustbin of the uncool, at least in her mind. Tragic or What, she thought…

Where does this end? I wondered. Isn’t having a good device which works for you enough? Why be part of the incessant pressure, aided and abetted by saturation marketing to have the latest machine made for pennies in a far-off land and sold for a huge profit when you could stick with

what you already have, especially when it turns out to be flawed? Those who rushed to buy the latest product now find that if it breaks, they are told just to buy another…

It takes real discipline to make do with what we have and which works perfectly well when we are bombarded with the new and untried which may fail us. It is an exercise of our spirit to try to resist the pressures which want us to buy the latest; try resisting, especially if you are young and trying to be cool, and you will encounter the force of the pressures, even in this small example, of the forces we live under. And all they want is our money.

Think of all the other more insidious and even damaging ways we are told to think and react by others and you will begin to see the enslavements we are subject to. This is not accidental and they cost us immense amounts of time and energy, all of which are expended for very little. Can we not begin, then, within ourselves, to notice how we are being manipulated? Awareness of how we are captured is the first step to our freedom. Let us ask God to help us choose more wisely the things of this world and to come to a deeper knowledge of wiser and more helpful ways of discerning our path in life, as distinct from the road other people would wish us to choose.

Farm Street SVP