I've been doing a lot of reading and general investigating and searching on the internet recently.. on a sidenote: I wonder if scouring the internet counts as searching for the meaning of life? It must be on the www by now surely.....?
Anyway, I digress.. while I've been doing all this searching and signing up etc etc, I seem to have had a couple of revelations - 'Aha! moments' they're usually called.
The first 'Aha!' is that people don't know what they want.
Now I'm not talking about how you like your steak cooked or what colour you like, those questions you've been asked ever since you could talk so you've had to come up with an answer for those. Do you usually chose the same size and cut of jeans because you went through all the trouble years ago and have stuck with the choice you made then? Or do you usually wear a blue shirt with navy pants because your one girlfriend told you once that you looked good like that?
If I was to ask you how you like your coffee what would you say? Weak, sweet and milky? I doubt it - according to a study, 75% of people asked said "dark and strong" but only about 20% really like it "dark and strong"..
So what's going on..? Why do we lie about what we want - sometimes without even realising it? I'm think it's because we don't really think about things.. we're bombarded day after day with loads and loads of information and on top of that we've become so incredibly lazy and 'open minded' so we accept things at face value.. When the TV advertises people enjoying "strong black coffee with a rich dark aroma", we subconsciously think that this is how we are supposed to drink our coffee.. But when you go to make that cup, you're going to make it how you want it - no matter what the ads (or your doctor) says..
We're becoming immune to the usual advertising of everyday products. If you've been using a certain painkiller/toilet paper/breakfast cereal for years and it's been working for you, exactly what kind of advertising is going to get you to change your mind?
The advertising that works, however, is the advertising of the new and 'gadgety'. You've never seen this before, it could change your life (seriously....), you'll be a new/prettier/happier person once you have this.
When we say that we're going 'window shopping', that's just an excuse to go see what else is 'new' out there. We never knew that what we were missing out on was a Wii....! I mean, how did I ever get fit without the balance board/Billy Bo's Tai-bo videos/evening aerobics classes at the gym?
We're a culture of fickle and easily-bored creatures who have a handful of predetermined ideas that we've clung to from when we were angst-ridden teenagers, and the rest of our lives are easily swayed by whatever is new out there.. the iphone, twitter, wii, xbox, space saver, ps2, airbed, ps1, the big green clean machine... all the way back to sliced bread..
Everything is faster, cleaner, simpler, more efficient and we have more gadgets and things to help us get more time but I dont think I know anyone who sits around and says "Gee, look at all this free time I have now" after buying the latest and greatest gadget on the market...
And whatever is the latest and greatest now, is probably outdated in a month and old news in 6 - if you're lucky.. I'm even lucky if you've got this far into my blog..
I have to revise my 'Aha!' statement. We do know what we want, and that is that we want to be happy, but we're looking for things to 'make' us happy instead of looking inwards, because it's only us that can make ourselves happy.. nothing else..
