Consumer Shock!
Mexico abounds with opportunities for the newly-arrived gringo to experience culture shock, but in all my reading I never found much mention of the thing that got to me the most when we first arrived — Total Shopping Withdrawal.
Yes folks, I was mightily shocked (dismayed too!) to realize what a TOTAL CONSUMER CULTURE CREATURE I really was. I’d always thought of myself and the MG as decidedly unmaterialistic, what with driving old cars, eschewing furniture, wearing clothes until they fell off our backs, etc. I guess you could call us cheap, be it from sour grapes, making a virtue of a necessity, or whatever. In any case, we’ve definitely never been what you’d call big spenders.
So imagine my surprise at suffering — yes suffering! Total Shopping Withdrawal soon after arriving in Mexico. Me! Who always said I “hated shopping.†Who believed that sincerely.
Mexico can be a mirror. Sometimes it lets you see yourself. Some mirrors (like those department store ones when you’re trying on bathing suits) are not very flattering.
See, when you live north of the Rio Grande, shopping is akin to breathing – you don’t even notice you’re doing it, it’s an autonomic function. It isn’t a part of your reality, it IS reality. The sheer variety of goods available for purchase everywhere you look induces a kind of permanent and self-perpetuating trance state in the citizenry, who do their bit to hold up the whole system up by duly working, working, working, and buying, buying, buying. Nobody seems to question this state of affairs. It just is. And I’m here to tell you, it’s surprisingly painful when it suddenly isn’t.
I simply never realized how much entertainment value I used to derive from my most complained-about domestic chore, the food shopping. Even though I could do it in my sleep, indeed often did it semi-comatose after 12-hour night shifts, there was always the diversion of choosing (oooh, should I buy slices or dices, oil- or water-packed, red ones or green ones, this brand or that?). All the while seduced into a familiar daze by the lights and the colors of aisles of endless packages all clamoring for my attention, never mind that most of that stuff I don’t even consider food.
In addition to this weekly entertainment (which I of course didn’t appreciate at the time) there was the soothing background awareness that almost any annoyance, inconvenience, or whim that might arise could be instantly resolved by dashing to a store — at any hour of the day or night — and purchasing something, and I was moreover in the habit of doing so.
Overnight, these familiar comforts vanished. Not only that, but countless items I’d heretofore believed indispensable to my existence, were suddenly unavailable at any price. They had simply dropped off the screen, out of the picture — poof! No more prosciutto, no more volumizing shampoo for fine hair, no more homeopathic-compatible toothpaste, no more rayon batik fabrics, no more nada.
The whole experience has forced me to conclude that the so-called consumer lifestyle, to which we are all so well trained from birth, is a form of addiction, and like any addiction, leaving it behind (even willingly) is painful.
So how does one cope? Two things spring to mind, one active, one passive.
Wish lists can be helpful. Just write it all down for the next time you go to the big city or to the states. You can make categories, prioritize, organize according to types of stores for more efficient shopping — there’s no end to the fun you can have playing with your lists of consumer cravings. You’ll find out how much you really need it when finally in the store and faced with the prospect of parting with actual cash for it. Some items will disappear without a trace. Others you’ll realize you really don’t want to live without. Priorities while wishing can differ noticeably from priorities while paying.
And then there’s good old Time, the passive approach. You eventually adapt and change. You find many of those “needs†diminishing, and look back in wonder on what you thought so necessary a few short months ago. “Stuff†becomes less important. The itch to buy something — anything — as a knee-jerk reaction to the slightest fleeting emotion, recedes. On the other hand, you learn what is really important to you and figure out the least expensive and burdensome way to get it. I’ve come to see, on the far side of fifty, that my fond fantasy of a life of Zen simplicity ain’t gonna happen: I’ve been too well-trained. But my buying habits have become more conscious, and more limited. Getting stuff in Mexico is usually such a hassle that consumption for its own sake finally loses its appeal. Life becomes simpler, willy-nilly.