The goal of Postconsumers is basically two-fold. The first goal is obviously to help you reduce your dependency on “stuff” and the stressful hold of a media-driven consumer society on you. But the real goal, the one that is important to the Postconsumers staff, is to help you find the satisfaction of enough. We think that reducing the pull of consumerism on you is an important part of that, but finding the moments and times that give you the real satisfaction of life is just as important. Today, we’re going to talk about one of the ways to do that: Setting a family dinner night.
For some of us, this may be something that happens most nights anyway, but for many families, family dinner has been replaced by fast food, leftovers, and meals served in front of the TV as schedules conflict and people are increasingly busier than they used to be. Family, however, is one of the things that the vast majority of people will say brings them moments of satisfaction. If having family dinner is something that has become a challenge for your family, we think it’s reasonable to set one night a week aside as family dinner and insist that people’s schedules accommodate.
Of course, it’s not that simple when schedules may involve work commitments. We suggest that you have “family pow wow” time on the weekend and find a day of the week each week when your schedules match up. If worse comes to worse, make it family breakfast on a weekend.
And make it a full family activity! Get everybody involved in the cooking or various tasks. You can even have a family dinner task sheet that includes who will set the table, do the cooking, get the groceries and do the cleaning afterwards.
If you’re not used to having family dinners, you may want to “guide” the conversation to begin with! It seems odd that we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other as families, but sometimes we get out of practice. Consider making it a pattern that everybody goes around the table and talks about what they’ve done with their week. You may even want to pick out a news event that’s going on when you decide what day of the week you’re having dinner and make sure everybody comes to dinner with their opinion on that news topic.
When we look back on our lives later, it won’t be the meals that we ate alone in front of the TV that we remember! It will be the meals that we shared that, while they may not be specific memories, we remember as making us satisfied in life! Get out there and make yours happen!
