That thing where you don’t need something but you feel the need anyway.

It’s finally cold here in Cincitucky.  And I’ve been forced to wear my coat.

And I’m still cold.

This is because I haven’t been hardened off to the cold yet.

But today I was blaming the coat that has successfully taken me through many winters.

So I was staring at coats online.

I don’t need a coat.  Seriously.  I don’t.

But it is amazing how looking at them can make me feel like I do.

I guess that is why the economy works.  Because we all buy things because it feels like we need them.  But of course most of it we don’t.

What is that part of us that wants unnecessary things at the same level as necessary things.

Why do we want unnecessary things at all?

Do other animals do this?

Or is this just a byproduct of our fucked up human brains?

Now.  Don’t get me wrong.  I get that our pursuit of unnecessary things is why we can live in a first world economy.  Most of us have jobs that are based in one way or another on the pursuit of unnecessary things.

And indeed – some of the best things humans have ever done are the art and stories and music we create.  Utterly unnecessary – and yet so very human and wonderful.

So this is not some scolding diatribe against consumerism and trivial desires.

I get that it’s all an interconnected weave of human existence.  It’s just not always a very practical thing in my life.

I suppose if I wasn’t in a money bind with moving, I’d have bought a coat tonight.  Because I was cold in the grocery story parking lot.  And the only reason I was cold was because I haven’t been hardened to the cold yet.

In a couple of weeks I won’t even notice the sort of weather we had today. And I will still have my old coat.  And I will get a weird sort of satisfaction in knowing that I didn’t buy the damn coat today.  The human brain is weird.