Kraken of Consumerism

Gif by: Unknown

It’s strange how you realise you don’t want something until you have it.

I suppose it is the equivalent of “You never know the value of something until you’ve lost it.” that I never saw coming.

Lately, I feel like I am growing increasingly singular, that I am going waist-deep into larger-than-life concepts, espousing new ways of being that I don’t always know how to explain. What I have understood so far is this: I am growing tired of restless consumerism, of consuming for the sake of consuming, of always being hungry, always eating, and yet never feeling sated.

I am hating how consumerism is the default way of existing, that we consume as an automatism, never fully conscious of what we are doing. I mean, how many times have you bought something only to later realise you did not need or want it? That it didn’t fit you, that it would never serve you any purpose? Or the way we consume our time—haven’t you ever been idling about, and then somehow, found yourself waking up from a spell, realising that you’d been scrolling through Facebook or Instagram for an hour now and that, try as you might, you could not really say what it was you were doing?

And I don’t think it’s about consumerism itself, but rather about the way we consume things. Like an automatism. Without thinking. Without needing it, really. Or needing it just for the sake of having it, then moving on to greater things to consume.

I cannot help but feel that that kind of consumerism steals our consciousness away from us. Makes us black out and ignore the world and our natural selves as we become monsters, krakens of consumerism without knowing. We don’t know that we’ve changed or what we’ve become because we don’t know what we’ve been doing. And it’s such a vicious circle, this wanting. This hunger that is like a black hole, a void that can never be filled even as it sucks you in, even if it were to have the whole universe.

I don’t want that anymore.

I want my time back. I want to see where I am going.

Although at the same time, this revelation does not come alone. It brings with it other truths, uncomfortable facts that I do not wish to deal with. Not yet, at least.