Wants Vs. Needs

I was at the furniture store today and looking at some really outrageously huge furniture for bedrooms. We have an older house, so the palacial-style bedroom groups would have to be split up to fit into any of our 3 bedrooms.

I looked at one massive set today and wondered if people actually buy something that big. Is it kind of like how we women (well, some of us anyway) think when we see a man driving a really overly huge truck?

We think: "What is he trying to over-compensate for?"

Why is bigger so much better? Why does substance suffer for style so much of the time?

My husband makes me think of stuff without even trying. Like when I want to buy some new furniture. Yes, it's a "want", not necessarily a "need", since I do own a house full of furniture. But some of it is just plain tired.

Brian is the kind of man I think of as being like pretty much most men -- good, for the most part, but also unwilling to replace anything in his house unless it's disintegrated before his very eyes.

So, when I decide that maybe that "Trading Spaces" job I pulled on the couch a few years ago is tired and perhaps the whole thing should be replaced, I actually think about it for some time before asking Brian about whether we should.

He's one of those still waters run deep types that make you think things through. Sometimes that just bugs the living crap out of me.

I am, after all, me. While I like to think things through like whether God is here or there, about what the sound of one hand clapping is, or other existential stuff like that, I am a bit impulsive when I decide I want something tangible.

But Brian makes me think about it first, and actually that's a good thing. Left to my own devices, I'd probably have monstrous credit card debt and a really nicely appointed home.

OK, I'm not that irresponsible.

But in our crazy consumer driven society, it is hard not to want grown-up furniture. But then, I think...$1,200 is two plane tickets to ________! and it's hard not to want to fly there instead...

So, with my own arrival and some help from my dear husband who Makes Me Think, I have realized that life is about a heck of a lot of choices. Once the "needs" are taken care of, it does come down to choosing the "wants". We have decided to make travel a higher priority than new furniture over the past few years, and I wouldn't trade my memories and pictures of Europe for anything.

In the midst of all this thinking about what should I do, I realize I am lucky to even have these choices at all. There are some people who don't even consider it, or just don't have the means. I also wonder sometimes if people are conciously making those choices or do they often just do things because "that's what's next"?

I've fallen into that trap myself, but there was a point at which I realized I was never going to be a regular person who did things by the book...anyone who meets me sees an Apple Pie shell, with a real wicked sense of humor...and a full-fledge geek under that.

I'm ok with it all...after talking to my sister tonight, I realized that as I face turning 39 this year (ok, it's not 40, but I'm more of a -9 Panicker than actually the big -0 Panicker) that I've realized that I don't really mind being older, and that I cherish more of the wisdom I've gotten since the last time I panicked at 29.

Of course, talking to her was better than talking to a therapist. She's several years older than me and can truly assure me with her world of experience, that it's all going to be ok.

It is going to be ok, and I WANT to be able to say that sitting on a new sofa someday.