Had a quiet day today trying to erase yesterday’s traumatic shopping experience from my memory. I did have an unexpected visit from Brother in Law #2. My brothers in law (I have four) have the habit of occasionally popping in for a cuppa and a chat when they’re out and about. Today BIL#2 dropped around to shoot the breeze and hang for a bit. We started talking about the dreaded and imminent Christmas season and I’m not sure how but the tone of our chat turned into a conversation about desire.
Why is it that we (people in genral) continually find things (objects, people or experiences) to desire. Are we hardwired to never be happy with what we have? Eventually you’d think that we’d run out of desires… that maybe there’s some point of saturation where you no longer feel the need to acquire. But from what I see we don’t ever seem to get to that point, for as soon as we say or think we’ve got everything we want our entire society is geared towards telling us we want (need?) more stuff. Or maybe desire is so integral to being alive that if we were to stop wanting and desiring various things, people and experiences we may as well be dead???
Because the silly season is approaching with indecent haste, we’re all getting asked that most dreaded of holiday questions "What do you want for Christmas?" and I got nothing. I can’t think of a single thing that I want right now. Well I should qualify that – there’s nothing I want that would fit into the average Christmas present budget range. I’d like to build an extension onto our house approx cost about $25,000-30,000. I’d like a new pavillion that is a more sensible size for singleton camper approx cost about about $2,500. Errr, a hydrotherapy spa – about $14,000. A Moran leather Chesterfield lounge suite – about $8,000-9,000. New carpets through the house – conservatively about $10,000-12,000 and given a few more minutes I’m sure there’s a handful of other ridiculously expensive things that I might like.
But other than wanting big ticket items for our home… I can’t think of anything I want let alone somethng I might actually need. Maybe this is why I hate the consumer driven holiday season so much. We’ve all totally bought into thinking up stuff we don’t need for our friends and family to buy for us and we in turn buy stuff for themt that they totally don’t need and the whole thing is a stupid cycle that we repeat every bloody year.
Don’t misunderstand me though, I’m not some sort of hardline greenie or socialist trying to save us from our own mass consumerism. In fact I may well be one of the most accomplished consumers I know. But I just hate this mad accumulation of ‘stuff’ for no reason.
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