Let me start off with a few quick questions: What did you get for you 9th birthday from your parents?
- Who won the Super Bowl in 1993? (no cheating)
- What did you buy yourself for your birthday in 2001?
- What was your favorite vacation as a kid?
- If you had to choose your favorite vacation or your favorite present, which would you choose? Why?
I ask these questions to point out something that’s become pretty clear to me lately: People forget objects, but not experiences. Some of the best advice I’ve received about public speaking is to focus on what you want people to feel when you’re speaking. People will remember how you made them feel, not so much about what you say. This highlights a challenge for all parts of life: Presence and engagement.
New toys, gadgets, cars, and other consumables are intoxicating for a while, but as time progresses they lose their luster. When we begin using them as utilities, they become disposable.
Lately I’ve noticed this with my kids in how they spend their time and money. Last Christmas Stephanie, my wife, and I went over our budget and bought the kids more than the normal “3 gifts” that we have stuck to in the past. It was fun. They loved opening the presents. They played with them and after an hour or so they got hungry so we ate. Shortly afterwards, they played some more and got hungry again.
It was amazing to watch all these gifts—toys that we tried to match to our kids personalities, go from being the “end-all-be-all” to discarded and lonely. After my son put together the Millennium Falcon lego ship, he set it on the buffet in the dining room. Today, over 9 months later and the ship still sits in the exact place he left it the day after Christmas (this might say as much about us as parents as it does about him as a kid, but that’s another topic). He had a great time putting it together, but has yet to play with it again.
My middle two kids each got a scooter, which was thrilling for them to ride in the house. As soon as we asked them to take the scooters outside, they moved on to playing with something else. The gift that was used the most, out of the hundreds of dollars we spent on gifts for the family, was a $5 nerf indoor basketball set. It’s been broken and duct-taped at least a dozen times in the past 9 months.
Why was this the most popular gift? I think because it was a communal experience. Everyone could play, even the baby. It’s been setup in the middle of the house which means that it’s always being played around and with others.
We’re going to do celebrations different from now on.
I don’t remember the toy I got for my 8th birthday, or Christmas in 1988. But I do remember the trip to Keystone, Colorado we would take every other year to go skiing. I’ll also remember the 16th birthday scavenger hunt that became a 16th-birthday tradition in our home. Those memories are the true gifts, not the shiny plastic toy that eventually breaks. Memories are rust-proof. They’re stronger than steel, and they don’t break.
We live in a culture that puts a higher value on consuming than creating.
Consuming is play, creating is work. It’s no wonder that we are the most obese people in the world today, and I’m not just referring to the physical epidemic. We’re emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and sexually obese as well. Consuming begets consuming and until we hit rock bottom, we’ll consume ourselves to death. Buy this, get that, upgrade to the newest, trade in the beater for a leased vehicle, and so forth and so on.
Creating requires that we sweat, bleed, and cry over the suffering that goes into our creation. Much like a workout at the gym, creating a company, a meal, an experience, or art—to do so requires that we delay gratification. Delaying gratification is one of the tenants of maturity. Whether you’ve yet to be married or have been married for many years, how you and your spouse view creating memories will have a profound impact on future generations.
