On contested public spaces.
Last week as usual I went to get a coffee and took my dog with me. Then we sat together in the local park to watch the world go by. My dog initially hates going out but usually when I say “let’s go coffee”, she perks up and walks out, still begrudgingly but with a little more interest. She knows that when I get my coffee we will go and sit in the same park. Once we find the right bench, she will jump up and settle there, nestle next to me and we will together engage in the pleasure of doing nothing in particular other than enjoying the sunshine and each other’s company.
There are always people, kids, other dogs and traffic but sitting on our little bench we manage to slow down time a little. My dog is an anxious creature and needs rest, space and time to recover from normally innocuous activities like walking and interacting with other dogs and people. We are both dreamers and introverts and we love to just sit, be and watch.
That day there was a pop-up in the park. It was for a skincare company trying to get into the competitive Sydney market. They were offering free sample packs of their product and engaged our local cafe to provide free coffees. There was loud duff-duff music playing, photographers ready to capture the event- no doubt to keep the promotions machine going beyond the day.
They must have underestimated the impact it would have because overwhelming crowds of people came to get their freebies. There were lines and lines of people waiting to get their free coffee -if they had just gone to a cafe next door they would have paid five dollars without having to line up for half an hour. But the experience is what matters in shiny Sydneytown.
Recently I was at a gathering where we were talking about how to live a simple life. What does it look like to practice simplicity today? There is much we can do like slow down, keep our material possessions to a minimum and avoid cluttering our lives. We even spoke about practicing simplicity when it comes to our speech- only talking when necessary. However the dilemma that we identified is that our society seems to be structured against simplicity. And so at every turn we are bombarded by complexity. The example is my experience that day in the dog park. I wanted to sit, be and watch life go by with my dog, however the space that I usually inhabit to do this was crammed with music, advertising, media and “free stuff”.
Consumerism, clutter, marketing, communications and noise invaded this space. More and more our public spaces are contested spaces. Every bit of space is packed with anything and everything to capture and assault our senses. Trams must have advertising on them, billboards shift and change as we walk past to capture our attention, restaurant music must be played louder to entice us to come in.
So our mind, eyes and senses are never left alone to simply be and calm down, rest and have the much needed space we need to replenish ourselves. So it is very difficult to live simply even if you do put into practice individual habits to try and keep life minimalistic. In a society that struggles with mental health more than ever do we need “nothings to replace somethings”. We need spaces to be left alone- to be left empty rather than filling every corner with something. The results are that we are becoming a more wound-up, congested and potentially less free society.
Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski, Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions, Uniting Mission and Education. Karina also blogs, this article is reprinted with permission from This Wild and Precious Life.
