Mindspace

Mind-space is a marketing term. Actually it is more of a marketing target. Large organizations hire professionals to emblazon potential clients with billboard-like messages that are stored in the seemingly bottomless memory banks of the brain. Unlike traditional advertising (billboards, magazine ads, etc.) messages that reach the brain are permanent. How many jingles can you hum? How many corporate slogans can you list?
The subversive nature of mind-space advertising is alarming, and powerful. Many of us do not consciously give over the space in our brain for advertising, it just happens by osmosis. We hear a commercial on the radio or see one on TV and suddenly we’re humming (all together now), “doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, I’m lovin’ it.” There in our minds is a bill board for a fast food chain...forever...without our consent.
I spent a few days this month in the Napa Valley of California. In case you are not familiar with the region, it produces the bulk of California wines. Many of the finest wines in the country--and even the world--come from this area. Several co-workers and I spent two days meeting to discuss the coming fiscal year and build camaraderie for the challenges ahead. One of the ladies in our group is friends with the vintner of a rather exclusive winery. He invited us to have lunch in his home while we sampled his wine and eat a meal prepared by his personal chef. As you can imagine, this was a perfectly superb way to spend an afternoon. The wine was marvelous, the food was delicious, the conversation was atrocious.
Many of my co-workers are very wealthy. They spent most of the meal discussing who they would be telling (bragging to) about his illustrious meal. They also spent a bit of time discussing which car, boat, second house, etc. they were about to acquire. They discussed how the french oak chair rail in the house was nice and rustic, but wouldn’t fit with their tuscan decor. They tasted the wines and the food and nit-picked about the littlest things.

As I sat there I realized that we have become slaves. Slaves to stuff. Our mind-space is filled with hundreds of billboards promising riches, success, sex, love, even fulfillment if we buy this, or go there, or have that, or do whatever. We live our lives believing ten lies for every truth. Deep down, we all know that a new car won’t get us laid more often and even if it did, it wouldn’t give us someone that loved us. We all know that a bigger house, a second house, a different house won’t fulfill us for the long-term. But regardless of what we know, we walk down those paths everyday. We eat at places that claim to be healthy, even though we know they are not. We buy stuff we know we don’t need because it fills a void, but at the same time it drives us deeper into debt and therefore deeper into work that many of us do not enjoy.

I don’t want to sound holier-than-thou, but I think it is time for a little truth. Truth is big. One truth takes up the space of hundreds of lies. So, here are some truths that I’m painting on billboards in my mind:

1.) If I have food, I am blessed. (It doesn’t matter what food because millions of others won’t eat today.)
2.) If I can sleep tonight in a place of relative safety and warmth, I am blessed. (Millions of others will sleep in dire poverty.
3.) Everything I own is something the poor do not. If I have two coats, I’m taking one away from someone who needs it.
4.) People are after my mind-space, I need to put security measures in place to protect it.
5.) A truth is bigger than a lie. I am responsible to seek and spread truth.
6.) I am blessed that I may bless the next person I see who needs it. Not the next person I’d like to bless.