We are exposed to so much advertising everyday. Our society is continuously being consumed in a vast environment of the constant pursue to spend. Everywhere we go, we see ads for the latest phone, the latest shoe, the latest food. As a society, the push for us to spend our money on things we don’t need, things we already have, leads us into this blind spiral of materialism. Does money really buy happiness? To an extent, yes- we need money to survive and sustain ourselves, but there is a point where our happiness should (and can) no longer be maintained by materialistic goods.
I’ll admit that I was very naive about the world of spending- that is, until I discovered the world of YouTube beauty gurus. Videos of hauls and collections blew my mind in that they were so overwhelmingly excessive. Why, I wondered, did anyone really need the exact same shirt in three different shades of blue? Why would someone go and spend hundreds of dollars on a bag only for the sake of owning a designer bag? Small makeup and clothing collections turned out to be mini stores and hauls were basically 15 minutes of showing piles and piles of unneeded goods. Was this all necessary? Does materialistic goods really make someone happier?
Sometimes we become so absorbed in buying and owning everything we set our eyes on that we need to take a step back and consider what really makes us happy. Numerous times I have been in the situation where I really want something that is not essential. When I finally do get it, I always end up finding it not as great as expected. Was I any happier after getting what I wanted? Maybe for a minute, but I’ve gotten to understand that immersing myself in materialistic goods does no good for my happiness in the long run. Simply owning a shirt I see in a window or magazine does nothing for how I feel about myself- my happiness wears off extremely quickly and a shirt won’t magically provide any solutions to life long joy. In actuality, I always end up feeling guilty when I spend money on unneeded things- unless guilt will one day make me flood with happy emotion, this is another reason why consumption does not help me stay positive.
Materialism can be dangerously addictive- the more we tell ourselves we need something, the more we want it. It starts off with simple desire- by the time we get what we want, there will always be something more we wish for. It is a never-ending cycle of desire and consumption that will never leave us satisfied. Perhaps happiness should be looked at beyond the stage of consuming as much as possible. Maybe we should be refocusing ourselves on the things we already have, not on the things we don’t. It’s the little things that account for our happiness- our goals, our knowledge, our personal stories. We can’t rely on artificial goods to support our happiness- for that, we need to realize the more important things in life, the things beyond what money can buy. As Douglas Horton said, “Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss.”