I had a discussion recently with a friend about consumerism in the frum community. We both see how it’s ballooned in recent years and it leaves us feeling empty and uncomfortable.
One of the things I’ve tried to do a lot on this blog is shine a light on the endless delights and pleasures of an ordinary life. The things that exist around us and cost little or nothing but fortify us in our walk through the world by their sheer joyous existence.
I realize that the ability to appreciate existence and find joy in ordinariness is a really important part of who I am.
If anyone is down for a creative project, I’d love to see a frum lifestyle blog that is all about being ordinary. Not about being perfect, whether aesthetically, religiously, or emotionally, and not either self-consciously about being a work in progress. Just about being, existing, experiencing. Because it is a delight to do it together, to share common experiences and relate to one another, and we can. It’s just getting really exhausting and expensive to do anything in our world.
I don’t know. What do you say?
I ditto everything, your writing and expression is marvelous. The ability to just be is so hard now, you feel like your missing, need more and feels pathetic that it’s such hard work to enjoy the ordinary….we’ve moved backward but maybe that’s also the beauty, that we’re searching and combing hard to maintain ordinary and joy in the simple. it’s the swing, we wanted more and now it’s too much and back to the basics. maybe it will make us realer although I don’t appreciate the baseline of the struggle
Brilliant idea. Let’s do it.
Every so often I play with the idea of starting a spinoff blog that is less about shidduchim and more about life in general — but I realize this blog is honestly about life in general. So I don’t know.