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"Today is Black Friday!" and I say this not with excitement and enthusiasm, but with dread. While in smaller towns, people get on with their businesses, moving from one shop to the next prowling for bargains, the same can't be said for relatively larger towns and cities. When I woke up this morning, I logged onto Facebook and saw a video of the chaotic atmosphere in some Tesco store somewhere in England, and what I saw made me want to weep for our society. The pure animosity of the whole thing made me stop the video and pick up my laptop to type this up.
It is such a shame that we have grown increasingly into such a consumerist society, where we spend a lot of money on things we do not need but merely because it's on sale or "trending" (of which the trends change every few months - meaning you're frequently in shops looking for the next best thing), or purely for a hoarding disease which most people like to disguise as "retail therapy". We focus too much energy on what we don't have that by the time we get back home trying to pack it all away, suddenly our houses seem too small and so we want more space. With more space, it feels too empty so we go shopping again and this becomes a tedious, endless cycle which clearly needs to be broken. I am guilty too of compulsive shopping, but lately I've been trying to focus my energy on things that I DO have, bearing in mind that many people don't have it. Why waste my hard-earned money on cheap items that I will probably wear only once or twice before throwing away or getting tired of?
Many people are being injured severely while racing to a shop for sample sales and all sorts. The question that's burning on my mind is "Do you even need this, or are you buying it just for the sake of buying it?". Instead of saving up and investing in our future, my generation is guilty of satisficing and living in the moment without giving tomorrow a second thought. How then are we supposed to be future leaders when we channel our energy on trivial issues while our economy is going down the drain under our watch? We choose to turn a blind eye on things that affect us and wear our rose-tinted glasses all the time, but a time shall come when all this is gone and we need to face up to reality. We are drowning in our own greed, selfishness and hatred. We are not building anything concrete for the future of our children and our children's children and generations to come. We have very little to show for the time we've spent here, besides destroying the environment to feed our egos. to feel rich and powerful or merely for "banter". New species of animals are becoming endangered every year, trees being cut down, oxygen levels growing lower and lower as we destroy the ozone layer during the production of goods we don't even need. SIGH. I weep for our society...
