The Four Levels of Sadness: Imagination's Junkie

I admit to being a thrift store fanatic. That's not the sad part. The saddest part, and there are more than four when you stop to think, is what and who is to be found there.

The First Level of Sadness
... is when you pull out that little blouse or dress only to shrivel up your nose in disdain. Oh my god, you think, someone actually wore this. Not only that, they bought it new and then wore it. Maybe even with pride at how fabulous it looked, or so they thought.

The Second Level of Sadness
... is when pay perfectly good money for some godawful item to wear to the annual Grossman Easter Party, knowing full well that it is perfectly awful, and that some poor schmuck wore it in good faith before you. It is hideous, and that is precisely the point: it must be hideous to pass muster, or else you would have passed it  by for something judiciously whimsical that actually looks like a fashion statement you, and only you could have pulled off. Or so you'd like to think.

The Third Level of Sadness
... is when, in a moment of true insanity, you buy that eloquent fashion statement, realizing full well that you bought it once before and finally after a single wearing, or perhaps having allowed it to hang relentlessly in your closet, gave it back to the thrift store and were somehow obliged to buy it back. Truly sad. And, of course, you promise yourself to never again, for the second time, buy back a thrift store find you really should not have bought the first time.

The Fourth, and Saddest Level of Sadness
... is the day or so after Christmas when you join the throngs of after-Christmas shoppers who were sorely disappointed by the somehow meaningless gifts from family and so, end up, alone again naturally, combing the racks for that singular item that will assuage that terrible sinking feeling that you are so unloved and fashion-challenged that you are here, once again, searching for the ineffable gift to yourself that will enable you to face the world.

This last, and saddest level, strikes me as the quintessential American disease of "Not Enough". When you have shopped for family and friends, online and up close and personal, for weeks, days, hours before the stores closed on Christmas Eve, yet you return not to 'return', but to buy anew. For you, glorious and loving mother-wife-friend spent more than you should have or wanted to in an attempt to prove your consideration for the loved ones in your life, but ended up feeling somehow empty instead. The emptiness consumes the consummate consumer, forcing your hand to your purse to your plastic personhood to prove your worthiness and power. Yes You, Great American Consumer, must buy to be.

And that is truly sad.

Women shop to experience not so much shopping, but the imagined event of wearing that gorgeous outfit found wanting a warm body to give it meaning. We shop and as we do we imagine ourselves entering the room, looking fabulous, earning the praise and jealousy of the other women in the room, imagining their envious looks and pleasantries in the form of, "Oh, my, where did you get that??" You see yourself not so much in the mirror, as in the mind's eye, glamorous and funky and tasteful and thrifty, appearing as if in a fashion mag, looking years younger (or older) and infinitely enviable.
It is in this imagining that we exist in multiple realities and our existence is thereby magnified, amplified: we live, in our minds, in an alternate reality.

That is why we shop. We don't really need more stuff. We hunger for more experiences. We are imagination's junkies.

Is this sad? Of course not. If it were, television and media in general would not have their appeal. Why do men watch golf? Is it really for the scintillating scrutiny of the hushed voice overs describing in tepid detail the positioning of the club, the flight of the ball, the thud and roll on the green? No. Men, too, like we women, crave the satisfaction of their imaginary realities. Football fans, churning on bar stools like blood-crazed sharks are in fact living the life of Riley, feeling the sink of cleats into muddy fields, the clank of armor-against-armor, the thrill of the victory dance. We are an imaginative people, look you to our cars and cities, whose craving for experience has been mediated to the great benefit of the producer-species, manufacturers.
Why else sell beer with the use of buxom babes bouncing on beaches, bottles in hand?
But who am I to criticize our national pastime? I shop with relish, trained to it from birth. If not, my mind would lie fallow waiting for immeasurable happiness in the form of a sunny day, stormy night, or love's first kiss.

I am not sad. I am happy. Truly. I imagine I am, therefore, I might be.

[Painting:"Retail Therapy" by Des Brophy http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.desbrophy.com]