Getting Off The Merry-Go-Round of Consumerism
Photo by Tracy O
Struggling with Enough
One of the greatest struggles I have had with simplification is determining when I have enough. Enough money, enough stuff, enough food, enough time. I figured out one reason why this has been so hard:
We Are A Society of Consumers
This didn’t happen overnight, and some argue this is an outgrowth of a free market economy. But the fact is, we are bombarded with messages, day and night, to consume. We are told we aren’t hip enough, or pretty enough or thin enough. And these products will solve all those issues…
Why We Buy
Two of the major reasons why we buy more than we need fall into the following categories:
Keeping up
We have a great desire to keep pace with everyone around us. I saw this up close and personal when a former friend of mine copied every major purchase I made within a year, but upgraded it. Bear in mind my major purchases were out of necessity…and hers were merely to keep up. A co-worker, whose house was paid for (in her 30s) was forced to take out a mortgage and move to another state because her husband didn’t think the house was “good enough” compared to his colleagues and they needed a new one.
Pursuit of Happiness
Other times, purchases are rooted in the attempt to make ourselves happy. We pursue item after item as we think “I’ll be happy when….” Unfortunately, these purchases don’t make us happy, and we pursue the next goal.
How to Get Off the Merry-go-round
Neither of these are easy to get away from, because they involve personal work on the brain and attitude. If we are trapped into keeping up, we must ask ourselves why it is so important to keep up. A poor sense of self-worth can trap us into it, and it is only with hard work that we can free ourselves from it.
If we are looking for things to fill a void inside, we must stop and realize that the void cannot be filled by external things. It is only in working on ourselves that we can become happy. Happiness comes from within.
It’s a quick summary of a very large and difficult problem. But perhaps one worth thinking about on the craziest American shopping day of the year.
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