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Shopping Love


Shopping Love

There was a stage when it became fashionable for the apparently educated to argue that things are ideas. If a writer stated that a country is an idea, then a star followed suit by opining that age is an idea. Everything became states of mind. It was easy to keep off the beaten track and claim exception through this act of ideation. Will it be possible now to claim that shopping too is an idea, a state of mind ?

There is a question which seems to be a standard one when the interviewee happens to be a celebrity of the cinematic kind.  The query is, 'Do you love shopping?' Though not all the celebrities declare their passions for shopping , general feel is that they love it. Can shopping be something one loves like listening to music or walking, like reading or helping others? People who love reading read and it has its innumerable positives. Those who travel or those who paint too can claim similar dividends for their passions. But what do the people who love shopping derive from the act? Does one shop just for the love of it ? If someone shops for the love of it, what do we call such people ?

Shopping is an act with a result. So are the many such acts we mentioned earlier. The result of the act of reading is that timespans our minds with theme plurality of positions it holds. Reading invites us to domains of experience, realms of reality, havens of possibilities. It can enrich knowledge at one level,while it softens our persona and broadens our psyche. What is the end result of shopping? Shopping is the process of approaching a seller and buying an item. Each act of buying, each item we purchase is the result of a need. If buying is a need based activity, then the act of buying will hardly ever be impulsive. There are moments when we impulsively
buy something. But not all of us. Not always.

The goal of an act of shopping is to get an object buy paying the price of it. When a bucket is bought, it is meant to be used to contain or carry something. If a bucket is what a bucket does, then we may not need buckets when there is nothing for a bucket to do. Imagine a house where love of shopping has brought in a dozen of buckets. Will those do the work of buckets or will just remain non-working buckets since in the first place there was no need for ten buckets. When the objects multiply thanks to the love of shopping, buying minus need is promoted. Divorced from use the said buckets continue to pile up. Bucket for bucket sake, not bucket for toilet sake or bucket for bathing sake. Because one loves bucketing.

The craze for shopping, a corollary of purse strength wed to social insensitivity and loss of common sense, is an evil habit. Love of shopping is love of indulging in act without any clear motive. The fact that the query is customarily raised to the rich and the glamorous is self explanatory. Shoppers of today love just the act. The feel of doing it. The walk out with bulging bags of merchandise and the urge to show off the surfeit to the community.

A compulsive shopper is a hoarder. And hoarding is a crime. Imagine eating without being hungry. The resultant bloated belly.



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