An REI Staff Member’s Comical Reflection on Excess and Poverty

Tammy, one of REI’s staff members in Kazakhstan, shares her thoughts on excess and poverty in a very practical way: she compares the number of pairs of underwear people in impoverished nations have compared with people in the U.S.A. And the result is shocking! We hope you enjoy her comical reflection.

I was sitting on the floor of a friend’s house packing for a trip to Chicago. She started to tease me about how many pairs of underwear I was taking for my 10 day trip. I had thought “ten days, ten pairs”— that sounds reasonable to me.

“My personal philosophy is that you can never have too much underwear,” I told her.

My friend laughed and replied incredulously, “Yes, you can have too much underwear.”

Then she told me how just that week, she had bought more underwear because she was down to only two pairs.

“Two pairs of underwear?” I said, shocked, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

She smiled and shook her head.

My friend works in a country where the nationals don’t own enough underwear to get them through a week. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to have only one pair of underwear. Each night they wash their one pair of underwear so it will be ready to wear in the morning. So when my friend saw my ten pairs of underwear, it seemed extravagant.

This made me curious, so I started asking my American friends, “How many pairs of underwear do you have?” Most of my friends fell on the “you can’t have too many pairs of underwear” side with me, and most of my friends have more pairs of underwear than me (not to mention more pairs of shoes!).

But why is a discussion of underwear important? It has challenged me to ask myself, “Just how excessive am I? Do I really need three weeks worth of underwear?”

For my friend who is surrounded by people who own only one pair of underwear, having a few weeks worth is terribly excessive. But for most of my American friends, it’s “normal” to have enough for weeks and weeks. We have a tendency as humans to compare ourselves and set our standards according to those around us. What is the standard we are using to call our behavior “normal”? Is it really normal?

In the U.S., where advertising is out to convince us that we need everything from five different styles of tennis shoes to the latest technological time-saver, our perspective is constantly pushed to the side of excess. I long to live a simple life and yet I am a product of my culture. I compare myself to others and because I judge my life as “simpler” than those around me, I think I’m doing okay. After all, most of my friends in America have more underwear (and shoes) than I do.

But I must ask myself—where do my priorities lie? Do I own things or do they own me? Could I give them all up at any moment without a second thought? Is my life really simple? And if not, why is my life complex? Do I allow advertisers and other people to set a standard for what I need? Am I content with what I have? (or should I even clear out my closet?)

I finished packing with my friend that night and I did take all my underwear with me to Chicago… but I didn’t go buy more like I had planned to do. I mean after all you can only wear one pair of underwear at a time, right?