Quick (and Beautiful) Read Alert: April Dykman, a writer, editor and regular My Inner French Girl reader, has a thought-provoking and insightful guest article published on the popular personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly. Entitled “Freedom from Mindless Spending,” the post examines the nature of consumerism in our culture, how to overcome the relentless desire to spend, spend, spend, and the techniques that April uses to curtail the nagging voice that we all have in our minds that compel us to buy things we don’t need.
Unless you’ve the soul of Mother Teresa, we’ve all been there at one time or another: You feel sad, frustrated, lonely, bored, or just restless. You go to the mall for something to do, or turn on the TV to quell the nervous thoughts rushing through your head and disturbing your mental peace. Something catches your eye in a store window or the little window on your TV screen: a colorful T-shirt, a gleaming, patent leather handbag, or one of those sparkly bejewelled rings they always seem to be hawking on QVC or HSN. The display couldn’t be more enticing. Suddenly, the T-shirt or ring or handbag isn’t on the mannequin or TV model anymore but rather on your own person. It suddenly changes your outlook. It transforms your image, or at least you think it does. In that instant you’re no longer Mary Smith or John Brown of Nashville, TN, or Seattle, WA, but rather cool Mary or hip John with the bling-bling and the cachet that only a brand new, shiny object can bestow upon its lucky wearers.
In that instant, your life has meaning, your day brightens, your self-esteem and sense of self restored. For the cost of a T-shirt or a piece of costume jewelry, you’re the center of the universe you’ve created in your own head.
Except, of course, you’re not.
You’re still the same person you’ve always been — the smart, goofy, average, attractive, whatever-you-always-were person — you’re just a few dollars poorer. The Thing you just purchased didn’t save you from a life of mediocrity. You know perfectly well that nothing you can buy at the mall or on QVC or Amazon.com has the power to truly change a life, no matter what the price tag. Rather, what happened was that we simply allowed our chronically distracted selves to succumb to the temptation of having something outside of ourselves define who we are, rather than going through the emotionally difficult but ultimately powerfully rewarding process of discovering that for ourselves.
I’ve done it. Heck, I did it just two days ago when I went over to Target to pick up some stuff for the house and came out with not only the bug spray and crackers and herbs I really needed but also with a $20 nautical theme tote that I justified to myself by saying, “Hey, it’s only $20! And I’ve been looking for a tote that can stand up on its own and looks attractive and fits my netbook.” Never mind that I have about two dozen handbags of assorted shapes, sizes and price points in my closet, including at least three that can easily fit my computer and any number of other “essential items.” Never mind that said closet is getting so full of my clothes, B.’s clothes, seasonal storage, handbags, laundry, storage boxes, and God knows what else, that it’s hard for the two of us to stand in it at the same time without bumping into each other.
At My Inner French Girl, the most important thing I would love for readers to take away from the blog is the idea of life as a rich and bountiful feast from which we should all extract as much happiness and pleasure as possible. Despite what you may think, the French don’t believe in finding true pleasures in material things. Sure, the French bourgeoisie — a tiny fraction of the population, may I add — would have you think that style comes from toting the latest “It” bag from Louis Vuitton, spraying oneself with Chanel No. 5 every morning, bathing in a tub full of Evian, and slathering on La Mer face cream twice a day. A certain demographic from France’s decadent royal past decreed that material goods would be the measure by which people’s character and worth would be judged, and to this day that spirit lives on even within our own society, but most French have chosen to ignore that terribly snobbish, materialistic, unrealistic, and expensive dictum and have instead decided that a life of pleasure can be obtained from the simplest of all of God’s creations: a decent bottle of vin ordinaire, a loaf of freshly baked bread with the most minimum of ingredients, a handful of the ripest cherries, a single bite of the most decadent cake. If they can’t afford Hermes, they’ll happily settle for H&M. They don’t apologize for their lack of funds but rather celebrate the ability to make a lot out of very little.
As April pointed out in her post, even knowing that one should never judge another by the clothes they wear or the car they drive, we’re often the hardest on ourselves when it comes to deciding what to buy and how it will appear to others. I know I struggle with it every single day (and Target seems to be where it happens often!). Like April, I’m happily married to my best friend, I’m in relatively good health, I’ve had some amazing experiences in my life from which I’ll be able to churn out endless amounts of story material for years and years to come, and I’m able to do the one thing that I truly love doing: write. And yet, like April, I still find myself occasionally losing sight of “the flow” and thinking that I could somehow be magically this Other Person (the rich, gorgeous Miss Perfect that I somehow think I should be) by buying yet another doohickey or whatchamacallit. Like losing weight or getting back into shape or even finding God, it’s a process of self-discovery and self-awareness that will likely last a lifetime, but there are definitely ways of making it easier on yourself as you pursue the worthy goal of a truly meaningful life.
April did a brilliant job distilling these critical techniques in her article, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to hop on over there and give it a good read. She’s in the running to become a regular staffer at Get Rich Slowly, so if you like her post, please do take a minute or two and submit a comment about it. I’d love to see more of her work as she shares her journey with GRS readers (and hopefully MIFG readers, too!) in the future.
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