Full

I wrote this essay in July 2022 for a dutch blog about living with chronical illness.

My love asks me what I want for dinner, but I have to admit that I feel too full to cram anything in. Even though I haven't even eaten that much today.

So what am I so full of?

An hour ago we returned from the biggest shopping mall in Granada. An immense building with shiny natural stone floors and a car park not inferior to that of Schiphol Airport. It was not even that crowded but the grandeur and incessant music overwhelmed me.

We live in a valley towards the Sierra Nevada and for that reason we don't come here often to shop. In the two years I've lived here, I think I've only stepped in here three times. But for an assignment I needed something else and I had a choice: either order online or buy in town.

I chose the latter.

Sometimes my principles work against me. Since I preferred to buy locally and not place another order via Amazon that would come from I don't know where, I had to go to the shopping centre. A slick rectangular building completely focused on buy, buy, buy. And even though she helped me well and certainly knew a lot, the woman behind the counter finished my order quickly: I was not given any space to quietly consider whether I wanted this or just that.

It reminded me of restaurants in the US, where they come and bring you the bill right after your coffee because the next customer is already waiting to join your table. Or the person at the checkout who rushes your items past the bleep, gives you no time to put everything neatly in your bags before you pay, but quietly shoves everything aside to quickly deal with the next waiting person's purchases.

Or the salespeople who drift around you all the time asking if they can help you choose a new appliance. Or when, after the fifth dress you try on, they impatiently inform you that it really does look very nice on you.

Then I get the feeling that it is now or never, that this opportunity will never come back, because, after all, there is not enough. Not enough stuff, not enough time, not enough opportunities.

And so I am 'full'.

And I remember again why I prefer to go to shops where they leave you alone, buy my vegetables from the local co-op and, above all, get what I don't have in our neighbourhood myself. These are places where the 'buy now or never' culture is outside the door. Where they don't make you feel embarrassed when you walk out of the shop with nothing, but kindly say 'until next time'. Where my nerves are not bombarded with all kinds of offers that I should 'definitely think about too'.

Because I need time. Space to make my decisions. To listen to my intuition for a moment, to consider whether I really need this and whether I want to buy it there or somewhere else. Without feeling bad about it.

But I find that asking for space, taking a pause for thought feels very bitchy. It feels victimised, like pandering to my own weakness and being disrespectful to the other person.

But in fact, it is so liberating once I do it.

So next time I promise myself when I find myself in a 'don't look but buy' situation, I will still embrace my own pace again. To take three breaths and not let the other person's urge to sell overwhelm me, but to give my feelings and thoughts space to tell me what is important to me.

One thing that helps me do this is to realise that there is plenty, that other things are much more important than stuff more often than not. Realising that I don't necessarily have to have that thing to be happy, that I might meet my own needs better in other ways.

In doing so, I create a space between me and the seller, between me and that which I want to buy, and take away the tension of having to make a 'now or never deal'. Do I take away the guilt of not meeting the seller's expectations.

Indeed, there will always be another option, another way and another time after that, because we do not live in a world of shortage, but we live in a world of Abundance.

With Love,

Daphne