Tell me what you want
A couple of years ago, I saw a pair of green high heels in a shop window.
I instantly fell in love with them but knew it would be frivolous to buy. After a few weeks of my Mum hearing me go on about them, she said, “If you’ve visited them more than three times, you’re allowed to buy them.”
Bingo! I’d definitely visited them more than that. And besides, it would be wrong to keep on coveting them. I should just buy them and get it over with. So I did. And it felt good!
Spending comes with strings attached. We feel elated, relieved, guilty, or depressed. Its power can be quite overwhelming. And now that it’s easier than ever to spend money we don’t yet have, the have to have it attitude is growing in all of us.
Blink and you’ll miss it!
Why do I feel jealous of my little sister’s IPod, when my ‘generic’ mp3 player does all the same things for half the price? Why do I find myself shamefully and completely falling for female-targeted advertising and thinking I might actually want a Nintendo DS Lite? Why do I feel a failure when I get a mobile phone upgrade and a week later everyone else has upgrades that are faster, nicer and cooler? It’s because I’m only human… and I live in an age that, sadly, defines me by whether my earphones are black or white.
And it’s not just technology that moves at such a sickening pace. Fashion is just as fickle. One minute our trousers are slung so low it’s indecent, the next we’re giving Simon Cowell a run for his money! My best friend and I love to flick through magazines and play ‘If you could have anything on this page, what would it be?’ It’s exciting because we know we could never afford to actually buy any of it. We simply like to dream.
Dream On
Essentially it comes down to how much we care about what people really think of us? We may look devastatingly cool in our trendy clothes, but 10 years down the line we’ll still look back and cringe. And we’ll still be chasing that elusive ‘coolest gadget ever’ in the hope that we may finally be happy when we get it.
I think I’ll stick to the dreaming. I may be wearing the same dress to the fourth party in a row, but I’m probably having the most fun because I’m not thinking about those mounting credit card bills.
Take up the cash for a month challenge: http://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/services/services_menu.asp?cat=15
Written by Bel Rees. Posted on 26th October.
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