Empty your closet and come clean

Today I had yet another epiphany. A really good one.

I was lying in my bed, scrolling my Facebook and browsing through different lifestyle blogs (due to research reasons, of course, nothing else...) when I bumped into this article of NYT-liite, a fly-leaf of Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. It was an article about shopping addiction, consuming and the standard of living in wellfare societies.

It was also a story of Anni, 24-year-old nurse, who spends around 800 euros per month shopping (excluding her nescessary expenses such as rent, bills and food). Anni is no-one particularly special, she is just a normal young woman, who likes to buy things. As she hersef discribed it, "whereas someone likes to go to yoga, I like shopping".

Even though her behaviour and attitude towards her "hobby" struck me at first, soon I realized that what else could she be? Or actually, what else could I be?

Thousands of young women, men, girls and boys are just like her. Our whole lives are constructed around consuming. The purpose of our work is to create more things to consume and more money to consume those things.

Clothes, food, beauty, wellness, lifestyles, different idea(l)s, other peoples lives...everything is branded and made available around the clock. Thanks to social media we can share and sustain our consumerist behaviour. Feel connected.

With all my hippie-community-bike-second-hand-biological-recycle-yoga-meditation-awareness I cannot escape it either – I also consume. Every day actually.

Every day I spend time on Facebook scrolling on and on mostly random people's pictures and status updates. I enjoy eating sushi although I know its bad. I like to go to the hairdresser and get a new do from time to time. I like, or would like, to go on holidays. I buy things (even if used), and it makes me feel good.

According to NYT-liite, Finnish people consume 11 times more than hundred years ago. It is easy to escape responsibility and think that I am not that bad. Or, that the damage is already done.

But as long as we keep our closets closed, we cannot see that they are filled with shit we really do not need.

P.S. For those of you who are able to read, the whole article is here http://nyt.fi/20130913-himoshoppaaja-piti-nytille-ostospaeivaekirjaa-perusviikolla-paloi-500-euroa/