Hello, all! And thank you so much for reading and sharing!
Well, today was a pretty low key day, so I am very proud to report no non-budgetary spending! Lack of temptation was a big reason, since it's a work day and I was pretty much restricted.
However, some large catalogs arrived in the mail today, as the holiday season gets into full swing. My daughter has literally spent the past 2 hours pouring over these glorious books full of toys, electronics and clothes, and at last count, she had 32 items on her Christmas list. Yesterday, I wrote about minimalism, and now here we are, in the throes of the most commercialized time of year. All we see are ads for all of this crap, along with decorations and food ads.... It's enough to make you, well, want. Just want.
It got me thinking... Why do we covet things so very intensely? And one thought did occur to me. In our society, we often have the means to do things to cheer us up when we are down. Over the whole of my life, being upset was easily remedied by me, by parents, by friends and family, by the giving of things or of food. Not passing judgement, we do these things out of kindness. When I was little and failed to win the school elections (I was going for President, as you can guess), I was cheered up with a chocolate cake... When I was home sick from school, my mom would buy me a small gift to cheer me up, such as the best ever supermarket toy, "Wooly Willy", which had a male face and little shavings of metal that you could move around with a magnetic want, to give him funny beards and such... And so on and so on, through out my life. And I have done the same thing. When my kids are sad or disappointed, I have made their favorite meal or taken them on a shopping spree to cheer their moods. Raising their spirits, it seems, is not just about a hug and a supportive ear... In our world, we give... It could even be little things, like a card or flowers... But still, we give... We give and receive things because it does make us feel better. Even our favorite couple, Shamy, demonstrated this.. When Sheldon hurt Amy's feelings, he cheered her up greatly by buying her a tiara! (Watch The Big Bang Theory if you are not!)
Is it any wonder we then self medicate with that same chocolate cake and shopping spree experience when we get older? Now please know, this is sincerely not any effort to validate my bad habits... rather just the opposite... I am thinking that if I can start to identify why things feel the way they do, then I can get to why I act the way I do. Now, I am certainly not hoping that this exercise makes me feel bad about buying things for myself or others within budget, but I can say that so far, I am at least much more aware of the feelings and moods that surround the urges to buy things. And that, that awareness, is very new. And very enlightening. I am now looking out for that metaphoric chocolate cake, and paying attention to it far more than ever before...
OK, now it is time for me to start my Christmas list... :-) Thank you for reading, and have a great night! xo
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