In the past couple of weeks I've had a newfound fascination for putting on music while taking a shower. Those who've known me for a while might be aware of my abysmally short shower durations. Yes, short enough to be a unit of time. So in order to avoid getting death stares from flatmates/parents who notice me stepping out of the shower a moment after I've stepped in, I've added music into the mix to take longer more relaxing showers.
Also since the time I got into the habit of cold showers, the minute long durations have been reduced to what some people claim to last "a few femtoseconds". Since shower music inclusion has been a recent development, I use my phone as the source of music and slide it right outside the shower radius before stepping in. It has now been repeated enough to become a habit and since then have been free from the quizzical "What? Seriously? That was it?" looks. In my defense I'm all about the environment. Just saving some water as much as these modern "unrealistic" hygiene standards allow me to.
So all's been going well. Everyone is happy. The universe is in equilibrium. Now what?
Well the brain wants the next step now. How do I make this shower music experience way more enriching? Maybe a good pair of water proof bluetooth shower speakers would help. Imagine stepping into the shower every morning, to the soul soothing sounds of Rage Against the Machine informing people that they won't do what you tell them to. I don't want to take the hassle of bringing my phone ALL THE WAY to the bathroom. Setting up a tiny playlist. Finding a sticky-ish spot for my cordless bungie jumping enthusiast of a phone. And oh the pain of changing a song with wet fingers. Will there ever be an end to these Sisyphean struggles!
Yeap! That's how pathetic my brain sounds when it's quite in that comfortable sweet spot. Trying to solve a problem that's not even there. And since there's no problem, make one. And now that a problem has been born, let's throw money at it to solve it. Cause getting a pair of waterproof bluetooth bathroom speakers is what my life was missing all this while. Life completion can only be attained if Metallica - Enter Sandman was the soundtrack to applying shower gel on my bum.
Mr.Scumbag Brain is generally known for many such tricks. And finding the most irrational plugs for these ceaseless voids is one of them.
Now I might not even be remotely near the top tier of consumerists. In fact, for the past couple of years practicing minimalism to a certain degree has given me a sense of peace. But there are times when we tend to want "THAT THING" cause of how our value prediction system works. And boy! That value prediction system is so inherently flawed cause it is definitely does not have 'Logic' on it's facebook friend list.
Affective Forecasting is what the problem would be called here (warning: I keep bringing this up fairly often...in life). Turns out being shitty at predicting what would make us feel happier is something that we're unfortunately good at. And our value of getting those metaphorical waterproof shower speakers is so tainted with our current desires that it rarely takes into consideration how we might actually feel. I don't want to sit and sift through my thoughts and rationalize them to make a decision on not buying them.
This must have happened to you where you're almost sure on buying something. Something you've been borderline lusting for. And then this know-it-all friend of yours comes along and disses all about the thing we want. And suddenly we're contemplating how to inform him that he's not a friend anymore cause life priority wants a means to justify the desired purchase.
But when you eventually end up buying that thing there's a cruel expectation/happiness meme born out of it with respect to your satisfaction levels. Even if the euphoria lasts, it's usually for the initial phase. That's when life's obscenely powerful adaptive force kicks in and hence the new normal comes into being.
We expect the equation to be:
Me + Thing I want = Happier Me
But it mostly ends up being:
Me + Thing I want = Me - Next thing I want
Pardon the usage of heavy mathematics here, but this is just how the hedonic treadmill works.
Well then what's the point of this whole exercise then? Should I just not buy anything? Sell everything and live off berries on the ground? Maybe not. Unless you're really into berries, then knock yourself out.
The whole point is to isolate that desire at times and questioning the reality of the future self who is the owner of that new Hello Kitty floor cushion. And having Amazon give you the ability to buy stuff with 2 clicks and your credit card can be an extremely slippery slope. The mental exercise that I sometimes do is pretend the world has switched to slo-mo except for my brain. So I move my hands, body and legs as if I'm in bullet time while thinking something through. This is a weird way of coaxing my brain that I have more time to process a thought effectively making me less impulsive. And yes, it looks as stupid as it sounds like.
But at the end of the day it's a method that works for me. Rather than giving sagely advice it's better to work out your own methods, tactics or strategies. So that you can't blame me for impulse buying that Teletubbies glow-in-the-dark coaster for 90$ off Amazon. Please don't!!! There are way better deals if you look deep enough.