Sucked in to spend

Crash! Bang! Hoot of horns, squeal of brakes!
Visiting London for the first time in a few months I was in a state of shock. So noisy, so many people, and all rushing!
Last week I flew from Inverness to Luton, then train and tube into London to stay overnight before a day long meeting, returning to Scotland on the overnight train. I wrote this blog longhand in my diary as I was sitting in the lobby of the Park Inn in Russell Square, where it was 9.15 and I’d just discovered the meeting wasn’t starting until 10am. Not a great start!

But I realised the impact of London was bringing some of my values into a head on crash with another impulse. I was suddenly surrounded by all these shops selling ‘stuff’ — stuff I don’t need and yet I’m drawn as if by a magnet to go in and browse. I didn’t, but what was going on? I’d spent the last few weeks just based in Forres, my small home town in the North of Scotland, where there are very few shops. I hadn’t noticed myself missing ‘stuff’, so what was going on?

My value of buying less, being more environmentally aware, reducing, reusing, recycling was in a head on collison with the other part of me that just wanted to SPEND! On stuff I didn’t need! But this often happens and it’s symptomatic of any other kind of addiction, that is, buy the stuff, get a hit, and then the excitement of that wears off and you need to have some more to get the original feeling back.

So it leads me to ask the question: what is the purpose of me spending money on something I don’t need? And that begs the question ‘what do I need?’, and then, ‘what do I want?’, and ‘why do I want it?’.

No answers yet, I’m still pondering.…