This is the festive insulated bag that our CSA delivery arrived in yesterday. We leave the bag at our front door the morning of our next scheduled delivery in two weeks. We can even put the trimmings and unused parts back in the bag and they’ll compost it for us.
I thought this was a good photo to introduce an article I read recently about abundance theory. It’s from Oprah’s magazine, and you can read the entire article here. The brightly-colored bag and the mother lode of produce inside perfectly illustrate the concept.
Abundance theory is all about trusting that you’ll find what you need, because there’s plenty of everything available. For most of history, and still in many parts of the world, things of value were scarce. So it made sense to live in what’s called a “just in case” mindset. It goes like this: “Just in case I don’t have anything to eat in the future, I’d better take advantage of this sale on canned navy beans, even though I don’t like beans.” Most of us know someone who lived through the Depression who has a hard time getting rid of ANYTHING.
But when we live in an abundant environment with an assumption of scarcity, it leads to all kinds of dysfunctional behaviors associated with hoarding and storing. Things like working too much, eating too much, buying too much and spending too much. All these problems and more are the result of a culture of excess.
The article claims that making the mental shift of focusing on the abundance in your environment will cause your life to improve in all kinds of areas that may seem unrelated. This rings true for me because my experiment of joining The Compact has turned into a bountiful adventure. Not buying STUFF hasn’t felt like deprivation or sacrifice at all. In fact, quite the opposite.
I’m experiencing an embarrassment of riches in the produce department. And now I just have to make sure I don’t waste any of this gorgeous food. I hope you enjoy the article. Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the Comments section.
Leave a Reply