I have learned, the hard way, to avoid the impulses that drive one to make impulsive purchases. I have learned to define my desire for said product through separation. Take a step away and try to take the newness element out of the product and imagine it on you, in you, or under you one month from now. The problem with these impulses I have is that they drive me to purchase shocking, ridiculous, and useless products that satisfy a short-term desire to be different.

Craftsmanship means as much to me as anyone else, but when it comes time to purchase products, the subtlety of a craftsman’s curve in a rocking chair has never spoken to me on a personal level. I much prefer a new-age piece of furniture that has some innovative sex appeal with a couple exclamation points behind it. I want a piece that causes people to ask questions that have no suitable answers.

Had I followed the impulses that have controlled me at various points in my life, I would now be driving a bright orange Jeep with black trim. I might even have a bright yellow colored living room with equally bright orange furniture, and some kind of multicolored carpet that accentuates the overall theme. I might also have a visually striking painting of a screeching gargantuan, gold eagle, with beaming blood red eyes, flying above shadowed villagers scampering to safety on a red felt background. Those products would fulfill a definition I have for the immediate, shocking, discomfiting, and shocking elements of beauty. It’s a definition of who I was, and who I am, that I know would shock my visitors into thinking there might be something we need to sit down and discuss before it gets out of hand.

Two things prohibit me from following these impulses: A wife and a child. A wife, or any person on the inside looking in, tempers such impulses with rational refutation. When a single man, with no children, follows his impulses, people sort through the psychological damages he must have accrued throughout his life, and they laugh it off as a bachelor pad. When that same man has a child, however, that child has extended family members that care about that child and worry about their well-being when they see that one of his primary role models has created a living room that requires sunglasses. When one of that child’s primary role models also has a painting of a bloodthirsty eagle flying above doomed villagers, above the hearth, they might question his ability to raise a proper child.

The other thing that prevents me from following these impulses now is that I’ve been there, done that. I’ve been the person others tried to understand, and I’ve been a person that others gave up trying to understand, until they conceded that the person they thought they knew is a lot weirder than they ever thought. I’ve purchased a shockingly bright, baby blue pair of shoes that I considered an expression of my personal definition of beauty. I tore these shocking baby blue pair of shoes off the shelves on sight and without thought. I figured I was in for a psychological pummeling from those who consider anything different a source of ridicule, but I was willing to ride it out for the effect I thought the pair of shoes would have on my essence.

Others echoed these fears by informing me that I should expect the worst from my classmates, if I had the temerity to wear these shoes to school. “People do wear such shoes,” they warned, “when they workout. They don’t wear them at work, in school, or on the path to and fro.”

Hindsight may be 20/20, in this case, but I remember tingling with anticipation over the effect I thought this would have on my classmates. I couldn’t wait to introduce them to the new me. I then made a statement about the old me, by throwing away my old, sensible shoes.

Those who tried to prepare me for the psychological pummeling that would follow, would have been shocked at how successful my attempt to shock people was. I lost loyal friends over it, as they attempted to distance themselves from me to avoid having shrapnel rain down upon them. The experience was such that I thought of a short story called The Boy with the Bright, Baby Blue Shoes. I remembered a nature documentary in which a pack of hyenas brought a zebra down bite-by-bite, and my sympathy for that beast churned to empathy after this moment in my life. For those who abhor judgments of any kind and seek the karmic justice for those who do, this was one of the many for me. It did not feel good, and the pain I experienced changed me. If you’re going to judge others, you should prepare for them to judge you.

I did not have the confidence, or temerity necessary to stare these people down back then, and they broke me. I did learn that when one dares to be different, there are whole bunch of guidelines and borders, and most of them are superficial. I also learned one golden rule of life that I would pursue for much of my life to arrive at a final answer, and that was that most people consider it a worthy goal to dismiss as many people as possible in life. A wearer of bright, baby blue shoes becomes a wearer of such shoes, for example, until that person becomes a barometer of agreed upon truths that need to be agreed upon in the most brutal fashion possible.

At some point, I did find the subtle beauty of a craftsman’s curve in the gap of others’ writings, in certain lyrical phrases, and in the margins of dialogue and characterization. I discovered something in the intended, and unintended, philosophical truths of various artistic expressions of organic craftsmen. In those phrases, lines, paragraphs, and comprehensive thoughts, I discovered a shockingly different beauty that replaced my need for superficially shocking modifications.

My need for character-defining purchases also led me to be a sucker for innovation. My impulses drive me to purchase the latest and greatest technology my fellow man created for my convenience, and it led me to spend a great deal of money in the “As Seen on TV” aisles of prominent stores, and the “As Seen on TV” stores in malls. I purchase these products in the hope that they will simplify otherwise arduous and mundane tasks, but I’ve purchased these types of products so often that I now know that whatever short-term convenience these products provide pale in comparison to their suspect long-term durability. These innovations do sell, of course, because people, like me, get amped up on the idea that a collapsible garden hose will free up so much space on my back patio. The question I ask myself, now, when wrestling with the impulses that drive me to purchase anything that will make my life easier is, if this “new and improved way of doing things” product were in fact better than the more traditional products in the main aisle, wouldn’t the new products replace those traditional products that my dad and my grandfather used in the main aisle. If the new and improved products are as great as the manufacturer’s claim, it shouldn’t take long for them to replace the old, traditional products, but for reasons endemic to this article they never do. 

For those who still can’t rationalize their impulses away, I have one piece of advice when attempting to define your desire by separation. Those bright, baby blue pair of shoes that look so deliciously freakish sitting in that aisle will eventually become nothing more than a pair of shoes over time. A Jeep will become nothing more than a mode for transportation, and a chair will eventually become nothing more than something to sit in, once the effect of being shocking wears off. The person who makes these impulsive purchases also realizes that these products provide onlookers data about the person that purchases them in a manner that the purchaser will likely regret long term. I hoped that by purchasing a pair of bright, baby blue tennis shoes that I would make a statement that no one in my vicinity would soon forget, and they didn’t, and I realized that I allowed them to dismiss me as a person that wore bright, baby blue shoes. I learned that every day beauty requires a study of the subtle forms of beauty that will grow on a person, and when the otherwise impulsive learn this they will decide to purchase the white Jeep with black rims.