You Didn’t Marry the Wrong Guy. You Spent too Much Time Browsing

Stop wasting your time shopping

We all have regrets. Some are enormous like you wish you married someone else or you stood up to that person who’s now long dead. Some of us linger on the regrets of youth like why we didn’t study harder, save more money, or take bigger risks when we still had cartilage in our knees? Some regrets are in-progress, like why don’t you quit your job, spend time with your kids, hang out with friends, or take better care of your body?

Some regrets seem trite and inconsequential like, “I wish I never heard about Amazon Prime” — but those are the biggies. Aliens 16 universes to the left are signed up for Amazon Prime and aliens 24 clicks to the right are writing satire about Bezos.

Shopping regrets are ubiquitous and seem benign, but these are the monsters. These are the big-footed, million tentacled creatures that suck you into the bowels of the earth and vomit and transform you and your stuff into landfills.

When I quit drinking 4,000 years ago, I asked someone if quitting drinking was a dumb idea. I inquired, “Who am I gonna hang out with?” I didn’t know anyone who didn’t drink. That’s why people don’t quit drinking. They have to gather up new groups of non-drinking people and interview them for friendship.

My friend said, “Drinking never made anyone’s life better.” I concurred but I wasn’t sure I agreed. I don’t know that woman anymore. Just kidding. She’s my mother.

Amazon shopping, like drinking, never miraculously improved anyone’s life unless they ordered a life-saving device. Even Amazon’s tincture droplets of dopamine proved temporary unless you ordered bottomless tinctures of dopamine.

What Amazon steals is time. How much time have you wasted comparing the prices of v-neck sweaters and distressed jeans, rice cookers, and curtains? This is your one and only life unless you believe it’s your one and 247th life, in which case, shop away. Click click click.

How much time have you wasted scrolling through the deal of the day? Was it worth it? Was there anything you even wanted? Did you really need socks that could save your feet from frostbite in Antarctica? Was this how you planned to spend your life? Browsing at screen schlock?

Sometimes, I think about Citizen Kane and his memory of simpler times with his sled called Rosebud. I think “Man, people used to have a lot less stuff.” I know I’m supposed to be thinking, “that rich man realized money wasn’t everything and the only thing that mattered to him was his cheap little sled,” but that’s not what I think. That’s what everybody else thinks.

I think, remember when a sled was enough for all of us? When we didn’t go online to see if there were a better sled, wasted our time reviewing reviews of sleds? Trying to figure out if the reviews were real or manufactured by elves who needed off-season gigs?

I recently visited a friend who doesn’t collect anything. She never solves her problems or moods with a speedy dopamine purchase. She shops for what she needs and no more. She reads everything. She takes long walks. Every time I see her, she has grown exponentially as a human being and her house is empty.

She thinks she’s weird but she’s the real Kondo, the exception to citizens from the United States of Landfill. I think she’s miraculous. She has lived in the same house for twenty years and has acquired almost nothing.

My friend doesn’t like having people over. She thinks her house is weird because she doesn’t have a lot of furniture. She can’t imagine entertaining there, but when I visit her, I feel like I’ve been transported into Dwell magazine. It’s my favorite house in the world, utterly unladen by clutter. It’s like being outdoors.

I was mentioning her to another friend. The other friend said she also had a friend who didn’t waste her time with stuff. Her friend had lived in the same house forever and hadn’t updated anything. Same old stove from when the house was built, same cabinets, same floors. My friend described the familiar feeling of calm and admiration I’d experienced.

We both agreed they were the most productive, interesting women we knew. They didn’t waste time fixing what wasn’t broken, buying stuff they didn’t need. They were free. Marie Kondo had nothing on them or maybe, Marie Kondo would embrace them and finally get to relax in an unstuffed room.

Regrets. We’ve all had more than a few. But I say, if you’re going to have regrets, don’t regret what you didn't buy. Don’t regret a deal you didn’t find after hours of scrolling? Regret what you didn’t try. Regret not lassoing time.

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