Ivy Boudreau

Ivy Boudreau June 2018 People talk a lot about our society being consumeristic. Usually these discussions focus on the constant obsession with buying the newest and greatest and flashiest and trendiest, but that only scratches the surface. Not only does our society pressure us to constantly consume material things instead of being content with what we already have, it also encourages us to be constant consumers of media and information. There’s a continuous clamor in our minds, a persistent compulsion to check for notifications (and approval), an incessant feeling that we’re never doing enough or learning enough or traveling enough or looking good enough, a relentless onslaught of horrors in the world around us. It becomes so much that the primary voice in our head isn’t even our own – it belongs to a faceless amalgam of everything and everyone that isn’t us. Being in this state can be very dangerous. When most of the thoughts in your mind don’t belong to you but were placed there by someone else, it leaves you in a precarious state, ungrounded and likely to fall for anything. When you are so afraid to face your own mind that you have to drown it out in constant stimulation and noise, there’s no way you can truly know who you are. And when you don’t know who you are anymore, you have given up something about yourself that is very precious and powerful. When you truly know yourself, you start to see the way your interactions with the world can help shape it, hopefully for the better. You gain confidence and begin to lift your voice in defense of yourself, of others, of things you believe in deeply. You begin to see the way your presence works with the rest of the cosmos. So what can be done? How can we change the tide of the information overload in our minds? How can we turn down the volume of outside voices and turn up the volume on our own thoughts and ideas? How can we remind ourselves that our own thoughts are just as worthy to be heard as anyone else’s? Honestly, I think that one of the best antidotes is to do the exact opposite of consume – create. When a person creates anything a poem a meal an app a flower arrangement a wallhanging a business a quilt a photograph a podcast an event a song a good conversation a dance a painting they remind themselves that they have a voice and they are allowed to let others hear it. They have power and are allowed to use it. These things aren’t just reserved for the wealthy and famous and those in positions of authority….they’re for all of us. No one else gets to silence the strength of our own power and voice. So here’s my challenge for you – turn off your phone or laptop or any other distractions for an hour, pick up a pen or crochet hook or cooking utensil or any other creative instrument of your choice, and make something. Don’t judge it. Don’t worry that it isn’t “good”, that it isn’t original, that its a waste of time. Let it be…let it exist just as it is. Remember that if you made it, that no one else could have come up with something like it and it’s truly one-of-a-kind. Just make something, and let that action remind you that your voice – your expression of your own thoughts and ideas – is worthy of being heard.