Shopping For All The Right Reasons
Walking back to the office from an appointment on an Indian-summer day—the afternoon light already changing and the sultry air exotic with the dense odors of fall—I had a lovely choice: Either stroll along upper Madison Avenue, where the glittering shopwindows, set back from the sidewalk like bright, alluring jewels, just begged to be examined, or take instead a more direct route through Central Park. The window-shopping beckoned. Autumn and the first cold snap would soon be here, and the thought of bundling up in a soft new sweater—thick cashmere, maybe, in heather green- warmed my soul (if not my wallet). I wasn’t often in this part of town, so why not avail myself of its amusements while I was here? Then again, the trees in the park, visible down a side street, were beginning to send up their first flares of color; I knew our temperate days were numbered.
I chose the park. Though once there, I realized how much more I’d enjoy the walk if I had a small carton of popcorn, and I soon found myself winding my way toward the carousel and the popcorn man. I don’t think of buying popcorn as shopping, exactly, but the serious pleasure I took in buying it was equal to the pleasure I might have taken in buying a cashmere sweater. Why? In the moments I realized what I wanted and set out to get it, I was simply fulfilling my heart’s desire. Isn’t that why we love shopping—when we’re successful? And also why we sometimes hate it—when we don’t know what we want, or when we do and can’t have it?
Shopping is different from buying, which is only a step—and occasionally a superfluous one—in the process, says Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy. He points out that by the time we’ve actually exchanged money for something, we have already begun to possess it—examining, touching, thinking about what we’ll do with it; paying is only a technicality. Shopping is a way of examining the world, he says. (Besides shops, museums are the only places we go with the specific intention of examining objects.) Didn’t Christopher Columbus originally set out to see what he could pick up for his queen? One of the great motivators, historically, for exploring has been to buy or trade in things people didn’t have at home, says Laura Byrne Paquet, author of The Urge to Splurge. Remember the spice routes, the trades in tea and furs and gold? And on the local level, she points out, the marketplace has been one of the few venues where different classes could mix and meet, and where people from surrounding areas would convene to exchange not only goods but news and ideas.
If variety is the spice of life, shopping provides it. “You might not be willing to change your job or your religion or your friends, but shopping is a simple way to add newness to your life,” says Julie Ruth, PhD, associate professor of marketing at Rutgers University. Shopping among a group of strangers can also make you feel validated (or invalidated) about your choices. There are many reasons to shop: to keep up with the Joneses; to make a statement about what you can afford; as a response to the temptations of advertising; to avoid the twin demons of loneliness and loss. The act of shopping can deliver a messy package of complex issues: about commitment, trust, selfdoubt, identity, pride, taste. It can be compulsive, guilt inducing. No wonder it sometimes evokes anxiety.
But the best kind of shopping is as delicious and satisfying as love, and like love, it has less to do with having (and accumulating) than with thoughtful appreciation and delight.
A colleague tells us about a magic carpet. She noticed it at an estate sale and was drawn immediately to the rich and myriad colors, the fine texture, the graceful pattern. And the size: perfect for her living room. She had been looking for just this rug for two years. What a thing! She had to have it!
Then she saw the price. Well, maybe she didn’t have to have it after all. But the beautiful rug had woven itself into her thoughts...and she had carefully considered many other choices, none of which compared. Though she tried, she just couldn’t leave the sale without it. “So I paid the money, and I brought that bad boy home,” she says. And now, as the rug adorns her living room (in a perfect fit), she has gotten up in the middle of the night to admire it, turning on one lamp to appreciate its gorgeousness in a buttery light, or another to see how the colors deepen and shine in a brighter, whiter light—or sometimes to gaze at it only in the pale light of the moon. That rug is the first thing she sees when she walks in the door, and it fills her with happiness, every single time.