Shopping

"Everything is a vehicle for waking up - a wonderful lover, a heated arguement, dead batteries, sickness, success, whatever is happening in the moment. We can either accept our experience and wake up or go to sleep by dozing off and resisting our experience." - Charlotte Kasl PhD



Shopping to me can be the ultimate dozing off experience. There occasionally is nothing I enjoy more than rambling around a large department store and checkingout for a while from life. It's so easy, there's nice music, lots of eye candy and what seems like an infinite number of dresses, shoes and accessories to choose from (espcially in American stores, this doesn't apply in many small towns in Europe where I grew up but in LA thats a different matter!) And I have to be certain I didn't miss anything. Next thing you know two and a half hours have gone by. Kinda like dozing off!



I must admit there is great pleasure in this process and I notice it appeals most to women. The gatherers of primal days - browsing the woods looking for the best berries. It's natural, but it can be addictive. I have not had a lot of expendable income this year and so have not been able to indulge hardly at all. I am going to a wedding soon and need to get a new dress and I find myself sucked in once again to the mesmerizing endeavour of the pursuit of the perfect purse, shoes etc.



I have to watch it. It really is a modern ill, this shopping as recreation, what a time waster while we ignore other possibilities. There are ways we could better use our time. How about volunteering. There is so much unmet need in our communities, old people needing a visit or someone to shop for them, relatives maybe, boys and girls who need the guidance of Big Brothers or Sisters, you name it its out there as far as humans needing love in some form. I docent at a museum, it would not be open to the public except for the volunteers who open it every Sunday. I would rather be there than shopping. It's like eating what feeds my bodies needs as opposed to eating twinkies which is what I associate shopping with. It leaves you feeling empty after the shoes are worn a day, whereas the rewards of sharing yourself with actual people is an enrichment that lasts a lifetime. It's a choice we can make if we decide we want to wake up and experience life, and be a shopping zombie no more.