When we buy something, we get an immediate boost — it’s exciting! We’re hoping to get something from this purchase — not just the actual item, but the feeling it will give us, an improved experience of life.
The excitement continues with the anticipation of it arriving, if we ordered it online. We might check the tracking page, or look hopefully outside of our front door for the package.
Then when it arrives, there’s a boost of joy! Our lives will be better now, with this new thing in our lives. Of course, we know from experience that this is a temporary boost, and it doesn’t last long. Maybe it goes away within an hour. Maybe a day or two. On rare occasions, it might last a week. But it’s fleeting … and then we’re on to looking for the next purchase.
It’s a hamster wheel of constantly buying, to get something in our lives that we feel we’re missing. Some experience, some feeling, some hope of what our lives might be.
It can’t be given to us by something external, because the thing we really hope for is something we create internally. So the habit of looking for it outside of ourselves is never fulfilling, and will never end as long as we keep hoping for an external solution.