It’s that time of year again:
Everywhere we look, there are special offers, discounts, and limited-time deals vying for our attention.
Businesses & brands we haven’t heard from all year long come crawling out of the woodwork, eager to capitalise on this seasonal, society-wide shift towards consumption.
It’s a period where the scales tip in favour of spending rather than saving.
Having vs wanting.
Yearning (and the fulfillment of it) rather than comfort with what we have.
Mass messaging and decades (perhaps centuries) of cultural reinforcement have told us that worth – our own, the worth of others, our appreciation for them – is best expressed and communicated with material objects.
We want to make money because we think money makes something of us.
We want to spend that money on things that signal our status because we think our status depends on the things we possess.
We overemphasise the value of expressing our appreciation in material ways. We see a sentiment freely expressed (without a price tag attached) as flimsy… even if we’re slow to admit it.
Whatever shape our perception takes, there’s one thing for sure:
It pushes our focus outwards.
Rather than looking within to find that the thing we’re actually searching for is already within our grasp, we seek it in places it can’t be found.
And when we’re guided by this orientation, we fall into unconsciously selected patterns of overconsumption.
For instance:
This is the kind of thinking that guides us to spend money on things we don’t actually care about or we won’t actually benefit from… simply because we feel we’re getting a deal.
It’s all-too-easy to see a faster, cheaper way of getting something – and assume that it’s worth pursuing simply because it costs less than it used to.
If we liken the purchase to a path towards some end goal (because it’s always about what the thing gets us, not about the thing itself), then we have to ask if we care about making that journey in the first place.
Because if that path isn’t worth walking…
If it doesn’t lead somewhere you want to go, meanders away from the things you care about, or drains the energy you would have saved for navigating in another context…
That discount isn’t a deal.
It’s a deception.
So:
Rather than indulging the limitations of our psychology – the same ones that push us towards goals and pursuits we don’t actually care about – we can make another choice.
Neither is wrong. Neither is right. As always, it’s simply a matter of exercising our decision-making ability to its full extent.
Whatever lies ahead, we’re better off if we meet it with our head held high and our eyes open, free of the burden of false pretenses.