What do I need?

Being a poor graduate student with nothing but loans and a moderate salary waiting for me at the end of the seminary tunnel, I've felt a little bit nervous about "going organic." I make a very modest salary as a part time youth director and don't have a lot of extra cash to spend on things like organic groceries. Do I support the idea of organic produce? You bet! But why should I pay for organic produce and groceries that are sometimes two or even three times more expensive than the non-organic variety? Do I really need to buy organic?

But then I look around at my surroundings - I look around at the stuff in my life that I consider to be a necessity, and I wonder how much of it really is. I pay about $60 per month for my cell phone, which includes unlimited texting. The truth of the matter is, I hate having a cell phone. It's always ringing at inopportune times - either when I'm trying to get away from the pressures of modern life, sometimes when I'm driving, or when I'm sitting in class :). Do I really need a cell phone? Do I need people to be able to get a hold of me at all hours of the day? Our society and our culture says that I do, but I'm not so sure that's the case.

I have a car as well as bike and a scooter for transportation. I have an X-Box, for entertainment purposes so I can play DVD's and video games. I own my own laptop and even have a home printer for that laptop. In addition to my oven/stove, I have a George Foreman, an outdoor charcoal grill, a crockpot, and a griddle. Do I really need all of this stuff? I could easily simplify my transportation, I don't need electronics to entertain me, and my oven/stove basically performs all the functions of the other devices I listed. Yet despite all this stuff, there's always something new out there that I want. Do I need it though?

In our book Simpler Living, Compassionate Life, Evy McDonald writes an article called "Spending Money as if Life Really Mattered." In it she says "The inflation of our desiers has resulted in 'poverty consciousness' - where we think we're poor when our salaries are twenty-, thrity-, forty-, or even one hundred-thousand dollars a year. This is a crisis of perception. We have continued to confuse our standard of living with quality of life." (64). So when I look at all the things that I have acquired in my life I have to wonder how much of this stuff is actually improving the quality of my life.

The same thinking applies to our food choices in some ways. Often we confuse food that improves our standard of living with food that improves our quality of life. Take fast food for example. It's quick, cheap and easy. By choosing to eat it, we save time and money, thus giving us a higher standard of living. But the cost of eating fast food hurts our quality of life. Our health suffers, our energy levels drop and we lose out on the joys of learning to cook.

This brings us back to why buying organic food is worth the extra cost. The first reason is obvious: It's a better choice from an environmental standpoint. The second reason is less obvious: It improves our quality of life. By eating organic, we are putting less chemicals into our bodies, we are helping to sustain a healthy environment and are promoting better eating habits. Although buying organic foods might force us to cut back in other areas, I would argue at least for now, that it's worth it.