Between wants and needs!

The world is moving faster than ever. I ponder how far we have come as a civilization, and yet we haven't done enough. Most of us are now privileged to have worldly things, yet many still struggle to make ends meet. However, despite having all these materials, their value is now reduced in terms of importance, need, affordability, and access. I feel that the cost of things will go up over time, but our sense of value is going down.

The things we once dreamed of, aspired to achieve, and worked hard for are now taken for granted. We invest so much time, effort, and energy in not-so-important things, only to ignore or pay less attention to them once they are in our possession. One common sight I often see is piles of parcels and lockers. Not to forget the delivery persons driving frantically to send/post parcels to a location, racing against time and the safety of themselves and others. I am sure the value of the parcel is way less than life. I feel the rate at which we, as a world, are ordering things across the globe is faster than our heart rate. It's shocking to see that once the parcel is delivered, many fail to open it. Or it's misplaced, or the address is incorrect. It's beyond my wits to understand how we can order things around the globe and then fail to mention the correct address. I feel we rush to buy things, thinking in terms of value of money (cheap), offers, stock availability, etc., but fail to get any value from it.

I was on a late summer/early autumn cleaning activity recently, and I noticed so many items of clothing and random things that I had bought a few months back are still unopened or unused. I am sure that I would have spent a few hours finding them, paid a price, invested time, petrol, and physical effort to get them home. Only to keep them properly at the back of the cupboard. I re-evaluated whether any of them are still in fashion and in good condition for me to wear/use. I toggled between donating a few of them and using them at least once. All pointless thoughts now that the item is paid for and already in my hands.

I am surprised that these thoughts come only when I am cleaning, not when I am buying. And after going through the decision fatigue of what to keep and what to discard, like a lightning bolt, I just discard things without any guilt. I have yet to learn this resolve when buying. I then decide not to buy things at least for a while. But when I come across this wonderful item of clothing in the shop window, my resolve not to buy anything goes downhill.

In the past, people used to say, 'Only buy what you need; don't buy anything if you don't need it'. Now our needs and wants fluctuate between price, discounts, availability, current fashion, and Insta reels. Other times it's the urge to buy things, thinking just in case we might need it, as if we are going to Mars. Then we don't know what we need in another six months, as fashion/trend will change and what we have today might be dated. And so we buy more things. Then we face the age-old problem of not having much space left to keep these worldly possessions. We drown ourselves in this whirlpool.

What if the industries and shops stop selling things, will I be able to survive? I ponder that I might be just fine, which is relieving. I feel it's cyclic: since they produce so much, we buy. And since we buy things, they produce them. The false economy makes us think that these things are our needs, blinding us to our actual needs. However, the bigger question now is: What are our needs?