When shopping is just another escape from the present
This week on the Hidden Brain podcast, host Shankar Vidantam explores the lure of escaping real life online.
It used to be that if you wanted to feel what it was like to do something, you had to go out and do it. If your dream was to see the Grand Canyon from a raft, you’d head to the river… . But something in our culture has changed.
-Shankar Vidantam, Hidden Brain, Close Enough: The Lure of Living Through Others
A young woman in the episode dreams of performing music. She eats, sleeps, and breathes music. She even practices singing on her commute to work. But when she received a guitar from her fiancé, she realized how difficult becoming a musician actually is. She just wants to perform, not sit in a room by herself for 10,000 hours practicing arpeggios.
Another story in the podcast involved a study:
Participants watched a video of someone performing the “pull a tablecloth out from under dishes” trick. They then rated how confident they were that they could do the trick on their first try. Each participant watched the video a different number of times.
The higher number of times people watched the video, the more likely they were to say they could do it on their first try. After watching the video 20 times, for example, most people believed they could do the trick on their first try.
There’s something about spectating that feels like real life. It sucks us in. We spend days, weeks, months of our lives lying on the couch, voyeurs into someone else’s life. And it feels so real. So easy.
We watch, not to live real life, but to escape it.
Spending: The Ultimate Escape
The episode reminds me of something I do to escape: buying stuff. YouTube isn’t the only way we escape real life. Spending money can work the same way.
In 2017, the average American spent more than 40 minutes per day shopping. That’s 20 hours a month.
We lie on our couches, browsing etsy to dull the stress of real life. We spend to get rid of our problems, to remove boredom. We go through the day trying to escape the present, living for the weekends. We’re constantly fantasizing about that next trip or the latest and greatest iPhone.
YouTube and spending are false refuges. They comfort us for a little while but in the long run, leaves us as empty as before.
Why go through the struggle of learning how to make a table for $50 when we could just get someone else to do it for us for $300? “Place order” and DONE.
In the rush to escape boredom and feelings of failure, we will do anything. We’ll spend hours on Amazon with our eyes glassed over. We’ll open up our wallets as each swipe dulls the pain.
The thing that terrifies us most is to try something, to learn something, and fail again and again. We’d rather watch someone else live. We’d rather pay them to live for us.
It’s hard to acknowledge that failure is ok. It’s hard to admit that the pain of this present moment might be normal and okay. Or to lean into the awareness that what we have now is enough.
Shopping As an Approach to Life
These days, it’s not just stuff we shop for. We shop for partners on OkCupid. We shop for like-minded friends on Facebook. We shop for roommates on craigslist.
I’ve found my last ~5 living situations and my last few boyfriends online.
Everything in life is shopping, “try before you buy.” When my family changed churches as a kid, we called it “church shopping.”
Most of the time I spend shopping, I’m not even planning to buy something. I’m just fantasizing.
Spending vs. Living
I write a blog called Frugal Kite about working toward spending less and living more.
The more I try to short-cut my life through spending, the less I enjoy it. Instead of spending, I spend a lot of time preparing food for friends, learning how to fix my own bike, learning to draw so that I can decorate the house with my own artwork. It SUCKS sometimes.
Once, I made a horrible shepherd’s pie for my parents (used tomato paste instead of tomato sauce 😭). They were nice enough to pretend it was good. I was mortified.
This weekend, I pumped my own bike tires, didn’t screw the valve on tightly enough afterward, and found myself in the snow at 10pm with no ride home.
I could avoid all this hassle. I could pay to have someone else clean my house, do my laundry, run my errands. I could afford to get my bike fixed by a professional. I could listen to Spotify instead of learning to play an instrument. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But without any struggle, what’s the point? If everything were easy, I’d never feel pride in an achievement. I’d never know the sweet satisfaction of having learned a song on the piano or painted my entire apartment. Without struggle, there’s no joy.
This weekend, I made the best Thai curry I’ve ever made. It’s a curry I’d be happy to be served in a restaurant.
How long have I been making curry? About 10 years. I’ve made lots of good ones. But this one surpassed them all, a victory that means so much more to me after so many hours of practice.
Will you take the plunge?
Life is a difficult journey and a rewarding one. It’s about determining what is real, what is wonder-giving, what is enriching to you (hint: it’s not your bank account). Living is about putting away our wallets and rolling up our sleeves.
Like the kid backing up from the edge of the diving board, you can stand on the edge of your life. You can spend your life thinking about the next thing you will buy or the next place you will go, imagining that it will finally make you happy. That’s fine. Stay safe. Stay unhappy. Here’s the link to walmart.com.
Or you can take the plunge with me, try something at once scary and wonderful. You can learn badass skills, spend more time with loved ones, be outdoors, create life-hacks.
The choice is yours.