“What matters most” was printed in a fancy red font on the moving boxes set on the curb on trash day. I wondered if that was true for the family who had just moved, that the things that had been in those boxes were what mattered most to them? I wonder if the family ever noticed that the box had proclaimed that what was inside was what mattered most for them.

What matters most? As I ask this question, Thanksgiving has come and gone here in the United States, and as I celebrate it, the holiday is a national time to pause and give thanks. Yet my cynical side wonders if all it has become is a day off from work to eat and rest ourselves to prepare for what truly matters most—shopping. And more specifically: the intense shopping in the run up to the holidays of Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah.

In these next weeks we will be bombarded with forecasts and reports about retail sales, followed by the pronouncement of our collective success or failure as consumers in 2011 by measuring unemployment, GDP growth (or not) and prices. These indices are what we, in capitalist societies, measure; therefore it must be what we treasure. It follows that what matters most are all the things we can put in that moving box. The things we can see, feel and touch that can only be purchased with money that we may or may not have.

I do the same sort of measuring, in a different way—how much did I earn this month? How much money is in my bank account for Christmas? For a spring vacation? And, yes, I have started fretting over what I will do with my sons’ over the long summer holidays. Will I measure myself, my worth, by the vacation we take or how good my life sounds to other people?

As I sit with myself and family over the next six weeks can I name what matters most? Can I see it?

  • Is it seeing my sons huddled in corner talking about…well whatever teenage boys talk about?
  • Is it cooking Thanksgiving dinner so my mom can rest this year?
  • Is it playing Spades with my sister and her spouse?

Maybe what matters most is that to write this, I sat alone in a crowded house, took time to pause and reflect. And that for the rest of the year I will notice such moments and claim for myself what matters most to me.