Learn to love without consuming
Some years ago I found a song in a playlist I really liked to use when making my RPG characters, especially when it was a sort of medieval one. The song is by no means niche, the name is "Thus Always to Tyrants" by The Oh Hellos, one of their most popular songs and from the same album as the viral "Soldier, Poet, King". Despite folk or indie folk not being a type of music I usually look for or enjoy very much, this song in specific really affected me. I was impressed by how the simple lyrics especially resonated with me and spent a lot of time boiling these thoughts in my head during these years.
And I know the lyrics have a significant amount of biblical imagery. It's not that that made an impression on me. I'm a recovering Christian full of religious trauma and usually would not be touched by such narratives, but I can appreciate them when used in a way that is abstract enough to allow for diverse interpretations. The part that got me in deep thought at different times is the last lyric that finishes the song:
"Where I go, will you still follow? Will you leave your shaded hollow? Will you greet the daylight looming? Learn to love without consuming?"
"Learn to love without consuming." It should be a concept simple enough to pass by unnoticed. It can be easily associated with romantic relationships always demanding something from the ones involved, the strange and selfish way humanity has learned to relate to one another, always asking something from the other and sacrificing itself in pursuit of something that will make its lost, consumed part worthwhile. It's pretty romantic and beautiful in itself without the need for double meanings, but our minds always want to give the meaning we're searching for, even without realizing it, to things that were not created with that intention.
So I began to sing this song with my own relationship with consumption in mind, all the consumption, and by all I mean:
Obviously the things I expect others to give me when in a relationship of any kind. When we make friends because people are cool, and you want cool people in your life, it's because you want something from them. It can be their company, their advice, for them to share some of their tastes, thoughts, or experiences. Any of the things I expect from someone I love is consuming something from them, and we can't help it. I personally don't know any other way to relate to people. Most of us don't. And I understand that they expect something from me too, so I give, and I take.
Consumption in the most used way, the one I study in my consumer rights class, the one that feeds on capitalist ideals and is speeding up the impending doom of our planet, but not only that. Every single thing in day-to-day life, if I think about it hard enough, I can associate with this type of consumption and feel guilty about it. And I, compared to most people I know, am really low-maintenance. For financial, lifestyle, and moral reasons, I live with very few luxuries, not in a righteous minimalist way, just in an unintentional grunge and kind of poor way. Despite this, I still consume too much, and it bothers me. Maybe because I'm too woke, but sometimes I think it's not that. Everybody knows about the problems of our capitalist world and way of living, but being just poor enough to not be hungry while still only being able to go out and hang with friends once a month because there is nowhere to go without paying anymore makes things clear enough to really bother someone about how much people consume, even when it does not make sense. Why do I have to pay for travel everywhere I go, and why is it so expensive? Why, when we go out, do we almost always need to buy something to eat, and it's also expensive? And then we have to find something to do, like go to the movies, an arcade, a book café, or a zoo, and all of that needs money. And then we have to come back home, and that also costs money.
This is the one that took the most time to come to a conclusion in my head. Media and art consumption. There is recently a lot of discourse about it, but to make it clear, I'm not talking about scrolling TikTok for hours or listening to the same three alpha male podcasts for days. I'm talking about using most of our free time to consume art and forms of expression created by others, minds that are not our own. Every time I have at least an hour and a half to spare, which currently is the majority of my day since I'm only a 19-year-old student, I spend it watching good movies, listening to a huge amount of music, reading fiction for hours, or playing video games, and I live a really enjoyable life this way.
The problem is, I think what I consume has become who I am for a long time now. When I get to know people and they begin to ask about me, my introductions are a lot of times my name, my age, some brief overview of my personality and how awkward I am, and then hours talking about what I like. But what I like is never how I like the wind, my favorite color, my favorite subjects to talk about, deep thoughts, memories of the past, how I'm feeling now, or predictions of the future. It's always what's my favorite movie, what type of music I listen to, where I go out to eat, the last book I read. And to be fair, that works best. People, after getting these answers, can quickly assume how I am and make a quick profile of what type of person I am and if it's worth it for them to keep me close. I do the same. It's practical. Having things in common is the best way to make friends. But why do the things in common always have to be what we consume?
For a long time I beat myself up with it: "learn to love without consuming." But when it comes to art, I don't think this can be applied in the same way. It's not fair. People MAKE art ABOUT the "honorable" things I mentioned we don't talk about enough, like the wind, their favorite color, their favorite subjects to talk about, deep thoughts, etc. When we consume art, it's a diluted version of talking to people about those things, and even if it's not a proper conversation, there is no proper exchange of words, our brains make new concepts on their own, just like if it were, just like I think about all this I'm writing just by listening to a song that isn't even about it.
Art being an exception or not, it still bothered me how I didn't have anything in my life to talk about if not things I watched, read, or listened to. I don't go out too much, so there are few good memories and stories to milk in conversations. I do not want to be only what I consume. I don't want to be someone who only loves things when I can take something from them, nor someone who can only be loved by giving, giving, most of the time, things that were not mine to begin with, things I took from somewhere else.
So I began to force myself, as calculated and not genuine as it seems, to MAKE things. My longing for experiences of my own depended solely on my initiative to do so. By it I mean anything. Do things without a purpose. I, for example, began playing acoustic guitar three weeks ago. I'm still shit at it, and I'm not expecting to be good anytime soon. I'm also not expecting to gain something from it. I'm doing it just because I like it. I love music and I want to love my own, a sound that, as awful as it is, I'm making with my own hands. I'm not taking from anywhere or anyone. I'm not giving either.
I'm also writing here, something I wanted to do for a long time and never had the initiative for. Well, now I'm not only reading other people's thoughts, I'm also turning my own into words. It's great. It feels like something so vulnerably mine.
Lastly, I'm trying to turn my consumption into things of my own too. This way I feel better about spending hours on it, like writing long reviews of movies before reading anyone else's opinions on them, or making my own stories when playing The Sims, simple as that.
That's basically it. I also try to encourage my friends to do things. Yes, you should write a book about this idea you had in your dream. Yes, you should make your own recipe book. You should record this melody that has been in your head for a week and produce something with it. You should paint anything you find interesting even when it's not pretty. You should dress in a weird way and take pictures of it.