Luxuries and Necessities: Letting Go of Old Patterns
Back when Forrest and I were saving for a house, I spend a lot of time on financial planning blogs. It was a big investment and I was constantly looking for ways to live cheaper. One of them, and I regret that I can’t find the source, said a line I’ve never forgotten: “Don’t let your luxuries become your necessities.” It really struck me how easily something that starts out as a nice treat can start to cost a lot if you need to do it every day.
Like money, self-sacrifice works the same way. We all know (or are) that person whose life is so filled with moving parts that just maintaining it requires so much energy that there’s none left to help anyone else. Or the self-sacrifice looks like giving up something that should have been an easy luxury to forego. We can’t help other people if we’re so wrapped up in ineffective self-care that we can’t see them.
When my twins were infants, my Starbucks luxury became a daily necessity, something to get me through the day. I don’t regret it, but I definitely made own my life harder in the end. I kept feeding into my daily latte addiction until the day I went with the girls and the chocolate milk spilled. I didn’t want to wait in line again and, long story short, my kid threw her shoe at the barista. Two hours later, I was still fuming. I decided we couldn’t go to Starbucks anymore. This should have been a no-brainer for me, but that luxury had become my necessity and it took serious willpower for me to cut the habit. I was using self-sacrifice, moving beyond myself, to undo a situation I shouldn’t have been in. I’d used coffee and treats to paper over the true self-care need that I had.
You know what I wasn’t doing during that time? Practicing self-sacrifice to actually benefit anyone else. It took a lot out of me to get rid of that habit. If we want to have enough in us to build community, we need to realize again and again, that we have to get and keep our shit right. Not just for the fun of it, but because we are no good to anyone if we’re using all our energy just keeping ourselves together. So look at your life. What luxuries aren’t luxurious any more? What needs are you trying to meet that aren’t getting met? How is that getting in the way of building connection?
