For Wilshire Baptist Church
I’ve been mocked for using AOL for my email service. I was told it was “an antique.” That came from a friend who apparently had just noticed for the first time that my personal email is through AOL. He was kidding me, but still it made me feel a little self-conscious.
A few weeks earlier a longtime business colleague wondered out loud if my AOL identity was hurting my business. He and I are both freelance writers and have known the struggles of getting steady assignments over the years. But are people really that shallow, that superficial? Perhaps so. But as I told him, I really don’t care. If those three letters in my email address turn people off, then I probably don’t need to be working with them.
For the record, AOL (America Online) was not my first choice. My first personal email account was on Apple’s eWorld network. Yes, look it up; it was a thing and it was way cool at the time. Apple had it for two years and when they pulled the plug in 1996, they offered incentives for members to move to AOL, the world’s largest provider at the time. I made the switch to AOL and I’ve stood firm. It does everything I need it to do and does nothing more or less than the other providers. While I’ve had to change my address book numerous times to keep up with the service hopping of many of you, I’ve never done that to you.
Why the long discussion about email services? There’s a bias that new is better, and an opposing bias that old is tried and true; expensive means quality, and cheap is sensible. There’s also a lot of superficial judgment. It’s the mother’s milk of advertising: the smoothest cigarette, the most prestigious car, the cell phone with the best features, the cancer center with the most caring doctors, the church with the most theologically sound or culturally relevant worship.
Advertisers attach superlatives to catch our attention. I’d like to think they don’t really want us to bludgeon each other with our choices but I’m not so sure. There is strength in numbers and every product from toilet tissue to online universities is working hard to clean up their bottom line.
Instead of respecting each other’s choices or better yet, not worrying about them, we feel the need to show how much better and more informed and up to date and cutting edge we are. Or economically sensible: When I find that I’ve parked my Hyundai SUV right next to a luxury SUV, I’ve become fond of saying loudly, “For what he paid for his, I could have bought two of mine.”
Maybe I enjoy that a little too much. I actually don’t care what other people paid for what they drive. What I should care about is what I do with whatever I saved by not spending so much. Have I used it in meaningful ways – such as helping those who don’t have much – or just spent it on other forms of comfort and luxury?
And then I shouldn’t care about impressing anyone if I’ve made good choices. I should be as quietly happy and content with that as I am with my antique email service.