Guest column for January 21

Mariel Blake, a businesswoman and spiritual advisor, is a DailyNews contributing columnist. She lives on St. Thomas and can bereached at Mariel Blake@netscape.net

Every time I go back to the states, I feel a tug of longing tomove back. It's not that I don't love my life here. I still have adeep seated loathing of cold weather. To be honest, my remote desireto move back to the states can be traced to one word. Convenience. Ican get what I want pretty much when I want at a much cheaper price.No where is this more evident than at Wal-Mart.

As a social activist and revolutionary I feel more than a bit ofembarrassment at admitting this but Wal-Mart is my favoritestateside shopping place.

Right down the street from my parent's house, in a lot that usedto be a big, beautiful field, there is a super Wal-Mart. A super Wal-Mart is basically a department store and grocery store all in one.If you need something, you can probably find it at super Wal-Mart.And it's open 24-7. It is a siren song that is hard to resist.

When I go home to Georgia, I am inundated with this type ofconvenience and availability that, let's be real, you just can't gethere. It lulls me into a warm comfort zone and part of my spiritstarts to want to go back stateside.

There is a larger part of me, however, that realizes you pay aprice for that feeling. Convenience makes you lazy in many ways. Youdon't do your own thinking as much. You give over a lot of control.It's easy to let your life get clogged with convenient decisions andpossessions.

Recently my husband and I were discussing how we wanted to kindof restructure our house given new changes in our livingarrangements. It would be very easy for us to continue as we have,acquiring things on an as-needed basis that conveniently fit ourneed and budget. But too often that strategy leaves you with a lotof stuff you either outgrow and have to replace or to which you haveno connection.

We decided we wanted to stop filling our house and instead createour home.

The same principle can be applied to life in general. We live ina world that is quickly becoming convenience oriented. Couple thatwith our growing refusal to understand the concept of delayedgratification and its easy to see why so many of us are unfulfilled,unsatisfied and disconnected. It's easier to fill our lives withthings and substitute technology for humanity.

Take sex, for example. Internet sex, cyber porn, whatever youwant to call it, is a trillion dollar business. Not all of it is forfreaks and pervs. In fact, most of it is people in chat rooms and onwebsites having virtual relationships that may never see the lightof day in the real world. Sure it may be convenient to have arelationship on the Internet. After all, you can be whoever youwant. But it hasn't got the same substance. Now if some of thesepeople put just a fraction of the time and money they spend onlinedeveloping social skills and improving whatever physical issues theyhave that they think are deficient, they could be having real sexwith someone who cares about them and not their money or the made-up person they are pretending to be online.

Or how about careers.

Millions of people report to their job and work their shift 40hours a week and collect their check until retirement. They may begood at what they do and it might be a job they don't mind doing. Inother words, it may be convenient to work 30 years or more at a jobyou can tolerate where the best thing you can say is the paycheck issteady and it's got benefits, but why spend 40 hours a week, 50weeks a year for 30 years doing something that doesn't give you joyand a sense of fulfillment.

Why not take some time and money and get trained to do somethingyou love doing? At least that way you won't spend hours a day foryears killing your spirit. Plus, it's been shown thatdissatisfaction at work manifests negatively in other parts of yourlife.

Things that are easy or convenient may serve a purpose butultimately they are the Twinkies of life. Empty calories that onlyprovide fleeting enjoyment. It's the things you have to put someeffort into that provide the sustenance and extended pleasure thatmakes life worth living.

There is a record store in downtown Athens, Ga., calledSchoolhouse Records that I love. Like Wal-Mart I can get sucked inthere for hours. Unlike Wal-Mart it isn't full of mass-produced CDsof only the latest music. It also has the more hard to find stuffyou thought was out of circulation. The first time I went there Igot a CD copy of the music from Ain't Misbehavin', one of myfavorite musicals. Since then I've found vintage Miles, EPMD and aPrince album (and by album I do mean vinyl) I've been looking forfor years. Their prices are a bit higher and you have to spend sometime searching but sometimes it's worth sacrificing convenience forquality.