Thursday 6 July 2006

Pic of the day: "I don't need anything... nothing at all."

Trade day

The hot weather has broken for this time. It is not chilly, it is warmer than mild, but it is no longer all tropical all day. There was even a rain shower. It did not last long, though. And it did not stop the Trade Day.

Trade Day is an annual event on the first Thursday in July here in Kristiansand. The shops sell things at rock bottom prices, but of course these are mostly things they did not get rid of even at usual sales. In the past this even actually managed to create some "fever" among the many housewives who came to the city from the surrounding countryside. The last few years people have become calmer and more discerning. The prevailing theory at our office seems to be that people have more money, so they can don't think so highly of low prices; also, there are sales all the time now. It is almost the norm.

I looked around a little, but then went to my job and stayed there fairly late. I don't really need anything except the daily food. Well, and a new computer now and then, but I have had my fill for a while. I still go and look. Look at the goods, and the chubby housewives I use to write about each year. But neither the one nor the other make me wish for my life to change for real. The time for expansion was over long ago, the time for contraction is now. I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow. I need to remember that more, not less.

***

I know I must come across as arrogant, even contemptuous sometimes when I talk about our consumer society. How the great mass of people are trapped in a mindset that stopped making sense long ago. How consuming more certainly made people happy when they were poor and starving, but does no such thing now that we are well fed and well clothed. And yet in some ways I am the same. There is an odd comfort in continuing what you have been doing, even if it does not produce the desired results. Perhaps this is what the English expression means: "Better the devil you know..." Well, I guess it applies to people too.

I guess when I do something that used to give me pleasure, or that I associate with other things that gave me pleasure... I call up a kind of echo of that past pleasure. And then it is easy to believe that this more faint pleasure is caused by what I did now, but this is not necessarily true. It may be that I could have enjoyed just as much to just sit quietly and think back to that time.

The patterns we learn when we are small tend to keep perpetuating themselves through our lives. The details can still change, and usually will during youth. That's where we listen to the music we will love for the rest of our lives, I have read. This is where we synchronize with others of our generation rather than just our parents, although we tend to underestimate the influence from earlier in our lives. We probably underestimate also the parts of our mind that is not learned at all, that we are born with. It feels kinda shameful that we are riding the horse in the direction it was going anyway. But to some extent it is so: By watching a small baby react to bright lights and loud sounds, you can predict with great accuracy whether it will grow up to be a thrill-seeker or a shy bookworm.

No points for guessing which of these I am. And I am quite satisfied with that. But there are other things this Trade Day has shown me, that I need to change. Perhaps I could call it "trading up" my soul... bit by bit.