I do enjoy buying clothes and I cannot deny that going shopping fills me with satisfaction. But there is that unalterable thought growing in my mind that there is something that is completely distressing about it.
Black Friday is the perfect representation of everything that is wrong in our Western society. I feel uncomfortable when I think of these crowds of people rushing in malls looking like degenerated anthills with only one goal, buy a better version of something they already have for the lowest price possible. And it is truly going to change the way that person exists? Is a bigger TV, a more powerful car, bright new clothes going to change one’s life?
If it does change someone’s life it is for the worse. The contentment will only last a few days, a few weeks at most, until a neighbour gets an even bigger TV, until a sibling gets a faster car and a friend is seen with fashionable clothes. These people will no longer look at us with envious eyes and they will feed their happiness with our jealousy. And we will desperately wait for the next Black Friday because there is no way we would want to pay the full price, but we are dying for these shining, coveting eyes to look at us.
If the pleasure of getting something new is thrilling, it makes the following and inescapable frustration even more bitter. The way to happiness is choosing to satisfy ourselves with what we already have and to stop comparing ourselves to our peers. Because truly, in our world, there is no limit to the amount of money we can spend and entering such a competition is, first of all a long-term economic suicide yet also a vicious circle of, indeed, peaks of delight, but more importantly, anguish and misery.
This is why Black Friday is destructive for you, but it is to be kept in mind that this society of over-consumption is catastrophic for the entire world. And in a certain way, the entire world’s ruin will lead to yours. Every single thing that you buy will urge companies to make more of these. Every year, 300 million pairs of jeans are made in Xintang’s province, in China according to Ecowatch. All the highly dangerous chemicals used to bleach them are released in the country’s lakes and rivers and later in our oceans. The people making our clothes die because of these chemicals.
But we know all that very well. I could go on forever on how over-consumption is fatal for our planet. But the main problem is that we struggle to make any difference. And because we feel useless and consider our existence to be trifling in such a big world, we would rather forget about how damaging our attitudes can be and try to live as happily as possible.
But it does seem like our definition of happiness is inaccurate. Travelling through South-East Asia and living in very rural areas, where Black Friday is not even a thing, where shopping malls don’t exist and where people earn just enough to feed themselves made me understand how our world is wrong about it all. People not benefiting from globalization, in the rural areas of economically insignificant countries are so much happier than we are. This is as they have understood that comparing themselves to the rest of the world and always seeking for more will never provide them with the happiness they deserve. Materially speaking, they cannot compete with the so-called ‘first-world countries’; they have learned to satisfy themselves with what they have as long as they can survive and have stopped wishing for more.
Living in the Western World, where societies build the feeling that we will always be missing something to reach happiness even though we thrive in tragic opulence, is our curse and our blessing. We don’t need anything, yet we shall never stop longing for more. And because we don’t need anything, we need to be longing for more. We have to stop finding purpose in desire. Our purpose should be to feel this desire fulfilled with what we already have. And once we will have understood that, the toxic loop of consumerism will be over!