Over the weekend, we had two events that we had to prep for. On Saturday, we hosted a small dinner party. Since our house normally has the "lived in" look, it required a fair amount of intensive work to clean up. Part of our problem is that our boys tend to take over the whole house. Their toys and books often get scattered where they were last used. The boys "forget" to put them away.
As we started to sort through piles of things, we began to walk down memory lane. There were books that we had read to them countless times. Most of them had cycled through starbursts of activity and then faded. It was the same way with many of the toys. There were spurts of popularity and then they get broken or forgotten.
On Sunday, we had a different experience entirely. The high school drama club had performed excerpts from their play. The boys came home and asked us to go to see "Beauty and the Beast." It was even more exciting for them because one of their black belt instructors at karate was actually starring in the role of the Beast. We all had a good time.
As I thought about the weekend, I realized that this excerpt I found below is actually true. It's from a
longer piece by author James Wallman discussing the concept of "Stuffocation." In this interview and his book, he advocates for experiences over material goods:
So there are five key reasons why experiences are better than material goods at making us happy. The first thing is something that social scientists call “hedonic adaptation.” And that’s simply a way of saying that with material goods you get bored of things quickly, whereas with experiences you don’t. The great example is the mobile phone. When you first get it you press the buttons, you play with it, you tell your friends about it, you’re excited. A week later, not so excited. A month later, ehh. Three months later it’s part of the furniture. You just get used to the thing being around.
The second thing is “positive reinterpretation.” That’s basically, if you buy a bad material good, let’s say a pair of shoes that actually don’t fit that well or a pair that squeak or that coat that swishes or makes a weird noise when you’re walking, there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s just a bad decision. That’s it. But with an experience, if it goes wrong, it doesn’t really go wrong at all.
Think about being on a long bus ride, and you’ve sat next to a person who’s sick – literally sick – all over you. And there are chickens on the bus, the windows won’t open or shut, you bang your head, the seat is really uncomfortable, and you break your coccyx and you’re just in agonizing pain, it’s supposed to be a one-hour journey and it takes three days. At the time, that’s a really horrible thing to be going through. But the more you tell it, the better it is, right? There’s that magic. The magic of a bad experience is that it’s almost like there’s no such thing as a bad experience. That’s probably my favorite reason.
The third reason why experiences are better than material goods – and this actually references the status anxiety – is that experiences are much harder to compare than material goods. And that means that we don’t get the same kind of tension that comes with comparing things. You know, if you’ve ever bought a handbag, and your colleague turns up the next day with the better one – let’s say you got the one from Top Shop, and it’s a great bag, but your colleague got the Gucci one, and there’s no doubt about it, it’s a better bag. Or I have a Nissan, it’s a very plain, average car, and one of my neighbors has a Porsche, another one has an Audi. And there’s no doubt about it that they have nicer cars than me.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that for a holiday your neighbor goes to the Four Seasons in Hawaii, or the Maldives, or one of those amazing islands off Brazil and stays in a five-star resort, and drinks champagne from the refrigerators, which are on the beach. And you go to Wales for a rainy camping holiday. Or you drink warm beer on the beach, or whatever it might be. Now there’s no doubt about it that they had a swankier holiday than you. But did they have a better holiday? Is chilled champagne on the beach better than warm beer? People often smile at me when I say this, and say of course they did.
But actually, you might be really wealthy and having what looks like an amazing time, but you might not be happy and having fun. It’s much more about the people you’re with and what you’re doing. But anyway, from that basis, it’s much harder to compare experiences than it is material goods.
Here is the link to the full article: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/buy_less_do_more_5_reasons_why_experiences_make_us_happier_than_things/
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