When they first came out on the market, I thought they seemed silly. But then my mom got one, and I tried it out. It was love at first sound. My wonderful husband got a Mini for me as a birthday gift (the biggest part of the gift being that he got me the pink one, which pretty much eliminated the possibility of him borrowing it to take to the gym). I loaded my songs, figured out how easy it was to purchase songs from iTunes, and soon I had a great selection on music and was crafting custom playlists.
Listening to my iPod while doing the dishes, working out, or just going for a walk is like having my own custom soundtrack to my life. I can alter the mood of the scene just by the song I choose to play. If I hear a song on the radio that I really like, I can go buy it for a buck, where in the past I wouldn't have spent the money on the whole album for one song. I can pick and choose my music, and gradually iTunes is able to recognize my choices and recommend songs I might like. They are eerily competent at this.
Yes, I am quite fond of my little pink iPod. It's so me.
However, as I consider it this morning, I can't help thinking of the conversation we had at our Community Group this week. In our discussion about this past Sunday's sermon, we evolved into the topic of selfishness versus being more others-focused. Selflessness, or even unselfishness, seems to be very counter-culture.
We are born with an innate need to be selfish, as a form of self-preservaton in our more vulnerable state, but as we age we are supposed to be taught to see and care about the world outside ourselves. We are supposed to learn that "it's not about me." If we're lucky, we have great parents who will model this for us, and teachers who will expose us to the bigger picture and the needs of others. But these days it seems that even if we do, they are fighting an uphill battle against so many other societal forces.
In large part, I'm talking about advertising. 99% of advertising that you see in some way or another feeds our selfish instincts. The voices on the television, radio, and billboards whisper, 'YOU can make it happen. YOU deserve this. YOU can have everything. It's all about YOU.' (Ironically, they're so good at it we forget that it's a lie - it's really just a clever way for THEM to live out their dreams of getting filthy rich off of YOU.)
In our group discussion, Cherie made a terrific point. She was talking about a family with teenage boys they know, and how difficult it is to combat all these societal forces as parents. If you look at the technology that is so essential to their lives these days, it's all about the iPod, iTunes, MySpace. I. Me. Mine.
Soon after, Cherie's husband Rob did something I appreciate - he challenged us on how we are going to take action as a result of our discussion. We decided that as a group we need to spend a little more time looking outside ourselves and even our close-knit group, helping those in need. We kicked around a few different service projects we could do together, and before long we had conceived of a website for our Community Group where anyone from the church could go and post a description of their need, and then we could review them periodically and vote on which ones we would take on that month. With the understanding, of course, that we wouldn't be able to get to everyone's request.
"I know," Cherie said, "we'll call it iChurch!"
I really appreciated her sly observation at that moment. Sometimes we can get so caught up in really cool ways to help others that we can completely lose sight of the reason why we're doing it. Helping other people can suddenly become all about us, which essentially defeats the purpose. For reasons I can't explain, this reminds me of a line from the movie "Clueless":
"If you ever did something that wasn't 90% selfish, I'd die of
shock."
"Oh, that'd be reason enough for me."
As I go through the weeks ahead, I hope I'm able to let the truth of this message sink in. It's not about me. It's not about me. My iPod is great, but it's not about me.
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