By saramyriad
I wanted to get this out since the holidays are coming. Halloween has been and gone and Thanksgiving is weeks away, with Christmas on its heels.
There’s going to be Black Friday and Cyber Monday and I’m sure plenty of sales at the Big A. Personally, I use this time to viciously unsubscribe from any mailing list I might have succumbed to for a discount and then forgotten about. One year, if I keep getting better, there won’t be any sale emails.
Maybe.
Consumerism has us in a death grip like never before. People don’t cultivate interests; they cultivate wish lists. What people really wish for, I believe this with my whole heart, is meaning, connection, to create. Not cheap crap that will be passé next year because social media has told us there’s a new trendy toy or purse.
Eventually you realize that there will always be something else to want, if you let others tell you what you’re missing. Then you’ll realize it will never stop.
I’ve made no effort to hide my off and on fixation on shopping and the way I used it as a crutch when my emotions or life situation got too heavy. Buying, cleaning out, repeat.
As someone somewhere said, “The only way to win is to not play.”
To sit and enjoy what is next to me in the present moment and understand while there’s always more things to want, there’s even more things to be happy about. To be quiet and content when there’s always pressure to buy, buy, buy.
I urge everyone to reconnect with what matters. Some useless trinket, or volunteer work? Another item of clothing that will fall apart in two months, or dinner with a loved one you haven’t seen in a while?
When consumerism has us in a chokehold, the ultimate fuck you is to smile in its face and say, “You know what? I’m good.”
I feel you on this one. I wince when someone asks what I want for some made up occasion. They don’t accept that I really do have enough STUFF. Let’s share a meal and laugh at a terrible movie. Let’s drive around and listen to the good and awful radio hits from our teenage years. Let’s stay up til two in the morning making up wild conspiracy theories.
But people mean well. So yeah. I’ll smile when I open that Darth Vader chia head from Aunt Carol. I’ll smile when I open that coffee mug referencing a sitcom I’ve never seen from Uncle Dave. Just like last year. And the year before. I’ll smile when I happen upon them in the back of some closet shelf four years from now too.
—M.
Oh yeah, let me be clear: I’m not saying we should poo-poo gifts that are given with good intent. This is aimed at the “buying because we are bored/trying to self-soothe/someone told us we need this thing.”