The Granite Countertop Illusion

I confess that my wife holds the remote in our family. I know, I know, my manhood is in question. That's just the way it is in our home, at least most nights.

Her hold on the remote means that the default evening television channel is HGTV. Homes, gardens, renovations, interior design, outdoor living space . . . I consider it a dangerous, dangerous station. She loves it!

A couple of weeks ago one show followed a young twenty-something couple as they tried to find and purchase their first home. The couple, new in the community, had rented a home for several months. Near the end of the show, the young man was interviewed about the house search. He said, "I don't think we can be happy until we own a home."

Those words caught my attention. I looked up over the top of my computer wondering if I had really just heard what I just heard.

I was still considering that line when the next show began a few minutes later . . . another couple looking for their first home and another line that caught my attention. This time the woman viewing the home with a real estate agent entered the kitchen, noticed the appointments in the kitchen, and said -- with a bit of an attitude -- "I just won't be satisfied unless I have granite countertops."

That was it. They moved on. I couldn't, though, leave those two comments alone. My immediate thought was, "Who told you that you had to own a home to be happy? Who says that granite countertops are keys to satisfaction." Where did that thinking, that belief system come from?

I heard those statements as cultural values that folks have adopted without considering them critically. We all hold certain belief systems because of the groups of which we are a part . . . our families, our religious communities, our neighbors, our regions, our nation . . . we are a part of various "tribes" which give us identity and whose values and norms we adopt. Most of the time we adopt those values and norms uncritically. We don't ask where they come from. We don't question them. We don't recognize that they may be in conflict with other values we hold dear.

So in a sense, we all have our "granite countertops," those things that we are convinced will make us happy and complete. We take on a system of belief and hold it tightly, often as a part of our membership in a group of belonging. Before long we are protecting the system, pledging devotion to it, and allowing that system to order life, even if it is no more than the style of kitchen countertops.

For modern North Americans, relationships, jobs, material possessions, image, status, or financial security can become a "granite countertop."

The illusion is that something else in the outer world will satisfy us and make us complete. But that lie cannot sustain our lives. When the illusion is that happiness comes from "granite countertops," we can recognize it and even laugh at it.

When relationships, job, or image become our granite countertop, we may not see quite so clearly. Yet, the spiritual path invites us to name our granite countertops, to call them the illusion that they are, and to find in God that which is substantial enough to hold up the weight of our being.

Not even granite countertops are weighty enough to bear the essence of our souls!