Last weekend, we decided to go to the mall. It was the last day of the shopping festival. There were huge discounts and it made sense to buy whatever was needed.
We parked the car, everybody got out and headed towards the dizzying lights of the huge shopping mall- a haven for shoppers! That’s when I had the most uneasy feeling- I HAD NO URGE TO SHOP! I just wasn’t excited . Everybody who knows me in person, knows that I LOVE TO SHOP and I can’t resist the temptation to buy one extra pair of shoes or a handbag or just a scarf. I have always a handy list that’s kept up-to-date and all I need to do is pick up what I need and knock it off the list. It’s simply exhilarating!
This just wasn’t me- it was a “NEW ME” and it was weird!
It was weird because I had been to a mall the previous week, sat in a coffee shop chatting with a friend I had met after a year and returned home without making a single purchase. 2 weeks before that I was vacationing, so I hadn’t shopped. Even before that I had moved my home and was busy setting it up and had had no time to shop. So, in effect, I hadn’t shopped for around 2 months and yet I wasn’t excited. This different me was internally freaking me out. I shrugged off the disinterested feeling and entered the mall with a vengeance. I was going to get back my knack for shopping, my love for shopping and my old self back!
Now, please don’t get me wrong- I don’t belong to the hoity-toity, “Prada” wielding, fur-hugging shoppers. I am just someone who has always simply been completely at ease shopping- not window shopping (I find that a waste).
- I buy when I am sure. I buy what I need and what I buy always serves a purpose- sometimes immediate and at other times… in the not- so-near future.
- I do not go overboard on my credit card and I pay my credit card bills in time.
- I don’t buy stuff and then suffer from post-purchase dissonance because I know exactly what I want.
- I could be typically called, a “wise buyer’- wisdom having grown with age and experience in the field; certainly not like “Rebecca Bloomwood” from Sophie Kinsella’s novel “Confessions of a Shopaholic”(though I quite found her character amusing and exasperating at the same time).
Shopping is so not a sin that one must Resist
Shopping is therapeutic- “when you work hard, that’s the least you can do for yourself- GIFT YOURSELF with something you love! It makes you feel independent and empowered as you pay for your purchase. A sense of achievement at making the right purchase and achieving your goal. And if it’s one of the things that gives you the ‘kick’ to work on a 9-5 job, tolerate your boss and your team, so why not? And if being happy helps you to keep others’ happy as well, then I don’t see a problem.
“BUY 3, GET 2 FREE “, “BUY 1, GET 1 FREE”, “70% OFF”
Debenhams’, Zara, Massimo Dutti, Benetton, Tommy Hilfiger, Dorothy Perkins, Body Shop, Victoria Secret, Bath and Body Works – were screaming out “Pick Me UP” and the place was filled with eager shoppers. People were buying things like it was all free and it was needed for “dear survival”.
Changing rooms were crowded,the queues at the cashier were long as people stood with both their hands filled. Babies slept in their prams, kids sat outside the shops busy playing video games or on their i-pods blissfully unaware, while the ladies scrambled to get hold of whatever they could.
And there, in the middle of all this, was ME- going through racks of clothing and not an iota of temptation. My pulse was normal – I was trying to bring back the instinct, recreate my natural prowess. It was like I had been hit on the head and had damaged the “shopping” cells. I couldn’t stand the crowd or the piles of clothes and all of a sudden, I found it difficult to breathe. DAMN! What the hell was wrong?
“Was age catching up?”, ” Had I actually grown old?” (I could see a few strands of gray hair and the creases around my eye were not just laughter lines, like I’d love to believe). For God’s sake, 40s’ wasn’t old! People were falling in love at 40, getting married and even having babies. (I felt like a tiger who had lost it’s teeth). “What the hell was happening to me?”. Oh God! I was becoming one of those boring people- who go around all day, writing blogs and books with a cup of coffee and couldn’t be bothered to get out of a pair of comfortable jeans or was I on the brink of attaining Nirvana!
The girls’ picked up stuff for themselves and gifts for friends and we returned home. Other than the nagging feeling of not being interested which was like a splinter in my brain; I wasn’t even feeling that I had missed out.
An hour later, I was in my pajamas, sipping a cup of hot coffee and writing this blog and I was at peace.
P.S.: Thanks to my new found love for blogging and the blogging community, Shopping is no more a therapy that I need. Blogging on the other hand is hard to resist. My husband is a happier man 😉 and I am not complaining :).
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