Breaking the habit

Last weekend, despite heavy snowfall, my wife and I decided to undertake an excursion across the border into the wilds of Ohio. After an hour on the winding wooded roads of South Eastern Ohio we made it to our destination safely, the Southern Park Mall, where we spent the evening shopping. Well, sort of.

The first store we stopped in was Gap, where we found a cute red hat with a pom-pom on the top for Heidi. On top of being cute it was on the clearance rack for under $5! Needless to say, we didn't think twice. It wasn't until after we had made the purchase that we even thought to look where it was made. Sure enough, Made in China. Fail.

As you can imagine, we made sure to check every label from there on out. Out of everything we looked at we only found one item that was not made in China. A brand of shoes called Born that is made in Mexico. This adventure taught us a valuable lesson though. Ingrained habits are hard to break. Because we rarely buy anything besides food, my shopping habits have reverted to the way they were before our Made in China experiment. When I do go to buy something, I don't bother with where it was made, how it was made, or anything besides my desire for it. Its a sort of tunnel vision.

Then I got to wondering...how much of my life do I live like that? How often am I blind to the majestic and complex world in which we live? How often do I ignore the motivation and feelings of the people around me and focus only on getting what I want from them? Why am I content to be unaware of what is actually happening around me?

I don't want to live that way. It seems I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on all of this.