driven to spend
Jul 19th, 2007 by tortoise
I’ve been thinking about how strong the impulse tendency has been in my life and tracing the roots of it. Looking back, I realized that a large part of my impatience stemmed from childhood. (What a surprise.)
I remember reading The House On Mango Street. The book is told from the point of view of Esperanza, a little girl whose family keeps moving. In one of the vignettes, Esperanza talks about the house they’re going to move to one day. A huge white house with marble floors and a winding staircase (I’m paraphrasing). Her family has moved a lot, and her parents keep telling her and her siblings about the house they will someday live in. Eventually she realizes this house is never going to happen.
I remember lots of stories, lots of unkept promises growing up. I never got to see the slow, steady progression of an idea shaped into plan, a plan taken into action, an action becoming a result. Something either happened, seemingly out of the blue and occasionally making sense, or it was talked about and never occurred. I learned early on that waiting meant never. If I didn’t get it now — whatever it was — I wasn’t going to get it, ever.
I imagine there a lot of people for whom this is true. As I’ve been making budgets and working them out, I’ve begun to appreciate how good it feels to wait. It’s not the old kind of waiting, where hopes slowly die against the stand of time; it’s a new kind of anticipation where I create an idea to meet a want or need, and then watch as my decisions and choices manifest it in my life.
It feels really good to be, on one hand, taking care of myself this way, and on the other hand, providing myself with what I want and need. Before I’d be struggling with impulse spending and the negative effects it would have on my financial situation. I’d feel kinda grateful I got whatever I had bought, but the consequences of not having enough money down the road would sort of poison the purchase. Now I make plans and follow through, and the purchases I make feel good. The new way means a lot of unnecessary drama and stress is gone.
It’s an interesting process going through all the baggage you accepted from your environment and clearing things out. It’s rewarding in so many ways.