La Voz de Galicia – November 29, 2024 →
Thus, without realizing it, we enter that time of year when happiness is sold in bottles of perfume. That time when they try to convince us that we must be happy—and we must also show it, preferably through our actions. And those actions are often tied to commercial transactions that make us complicit in the machinery driving this curious modern life.
One can’t help but wonder why we need so many things, and what compels us to feel we truly have to buy them… My mother bought a new pair of shoes a year and a half ago; at home, we call them “the mayor’s shoes,” as they were purchased with the voucher given to the people of Ourense in the spring of 2023 to spend at local businesses. But to buy those shoes, we had to negotiate fiercely with my mother to convince her that the ones she was wearing—those that had already been to the cobbler seven times—couldn’t handle any more walks. “But they’re still good! We just need to replace the soles!” she told me on the way to the shoe store, and I explained that we had already replaced the sole, and the heel caps, and that there was no more fixing to be done. And she kept arguing, saying she didn’t understand why we needed to buy new shoes if the ones she had were still usable: “Can’t you see I’m wearing them?” In the end, she agreed to buy the shoes—not because she was convinced she couldn’t keep the old ones, but because she understood the voucher had to be spent on something.
Thinking about my mother on days like today, I wonder how, in just one generation, we went from not being able to spend on anything to spending what little we have on things we probably don’t need. I wonder what we’ve done as a society to “advance” in this way…
