The Right Amount

My mother and I often disagree on what is considered clutter and unnecessary "stuff" in our home. She likes to accumulate things while I love to clean out and rehome things that I no longer want or need. I have always preferred a sparse home environment while my mom says "things" make a home interesting and look lived in ... we will never agree, and because we share the same house, I have learned to look the other way when I see her piles of stuff stacked horizontally.

In the last issue of Creating Community there is an article titled "The Right Amount," by Alan Atkinson who works in accelerating sustainable development. He talks of wandering about a Costco or Sam's Club which invokes several radical feelings within him -- "raw consumer lust, great moral outrage, and aching environmental angst."

He continues by sharing a phrase he learned from a Swedish friend, " Det ar lagom." The word lagom means something like, 'exactly the right amount.' Atkinson continues by saying, "Most people in the world do not want enough; they want more. The desire for more seems to be deeply wired in the human organism. To have more has been our first defense against the vagaries of an uncertain future. Hoarding is the first act of those who believe themselves to be in the path of an impending disaster."

Synchronicity, perhaps, led me to the GLOBALONENESS site where I viewed a short video clip on materialism presented by M. C. Mehta.


M.C. Mehta is an attorney in the Supreme Court of India, one of the founders of the Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action (ICELA), and director of the M.C. Mehta Environmental Foundation in New Delhi. M.C.’s landmark environmental cases in the Supreme Court of India have resulted in the protection of India’s natural and cultural treasures – including the Ganges River and the Taj Mahal – from the adverse effects of pollution. An ardent supporter of alternative energy he brought about the transition of New Delhi's transport system (buses, rickshaws etc.) to become the largest green based transit system in the world.

To view the video see: http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/mcmehtaclip4