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I'm going to get semi-sappy on you for a minute. One of the things I am learning to appreciate about marriage more every day is the way that commitment to each other also means a commitment to adjust to a shared lifestyle. A lot of times this means making sacrifices that just make no sense. Take for example my obsessive loyalty to my homebuilt media center; While January would be perfectly content to buy a TiVo ($100 + $12.95/month) or subscribe to our cable company's DVR services ($7.95/month), I am unable to give up tweaking a homebuilt system that has cost me, to date, over $500 in hardware and countless hours of frustration and mysteriously unrecorded TV shows. I don't think she will ever understand my deep need to do it myself when so many other reputable businesses have done it better and cheaper, but she has somehow accepted it.... despite the mysterious way "American Idol" never manages record. Strange. What has been really refining in our lifestyle is learning how to better stick to certain lifestyle convictions we share but are, individually, oftentimes too weak to stick to. If you've ever had a conversation with me about Wal-Mart, you know my feelings on the place (if you haven't, I'll spare you the lecture -- instead, pick up this movie from Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon, or your own local video store). This has, from time to time, been a particularly sticky point when shopping for certain items. 5' x 7' area rug at a local fair-trade home furnishings center: $159.99. Similar rug made with child labor in overseas sweatshops sold at Wal-mart: $39.99. For every one of my stubborn points like this, January has been able to show me how we can take things a step further. Most recently, she passed along this little gem: Did you know that over 1.1 billion people on this planet live on $1 per day? According to 2dollars.org, more than twice that number and fully one-third of the world's population live on $2 per day for their total expenses. Can you imagine living on $2 worth of food per day? What if the McDonald's dollar menu was off the table? January and I have decided to take the $2 a day challenge over the next week, with the goal of trying to get a better understanding of what poverty is like. We are allotting ourselves $2 per day per person for food from Monday, March 5th through the 11th. I'm going to clean out the kitchen of any leftovers? so we can start from scratch for the week. If you're interested in trying it out for yourself, 2dollars.org has some resources for getting through the week, such as recipes, sponsor forms, and flyer templates. January and I will continue to post updates on our progress and success with various meal attempts here, so check back in. Personally, I'm interested to see how quickly the novelty wears off and this experiment starts to really get uncomfortable.
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