Happiness Through Marketing Detox

Max Said

Throughout the last few months I feel like we have both been making steps towards being happier people. We just find that we are more content with where we are and are focused on being grateful for what we have, instead of wanting something else. This has been a very positive shift for obvious reasons and I feel it has freed up a great deal of energy that was previously directed to things that were not helping us grow.

You have specifically pointed out that I have made a noticeable shift in this area of late and that this shift helped you to follow suit. And I of course feel the shift as well and this has made me wonder where it came from. I guess there are probably a few reasons for the shift, one simply being that it feels better to chose to be happy and positive vs being angry and sullen :) But thinking more about the shift and why I previously "chose" to fall into darker emotions at times, it occurred to me that perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have finally detoxified from the years of being plugged into the mass media and its constant companion, the great marketing engine.

I was far from a couch potato in terms of the level of my TV consumption, but we had network / cable TV available to us up until about 8 years ago. And of course, just living in NYC with literally stories-tall marketing messages bludgeoning your senses from every direction probably amounted to hundreds of marketing impressions a day. It was not until we just shut off the cable feed, and then a few years after this moved out to small-town Milford that I completely unplugged.

And any student of marketing will tell you that in order to sell product, you have to create a sense of need. To motivate the consumer to find happiness in the acquisition of your particular service, product or experience. And the underlying darker side of the this message is that one cannot really be happy and fulfilled without the item for sale. It is that want that really drives people, unfortunately, and therefore this is the tool of choice for the marketing folks who want to do their jobs effectively. The Rolling Stones song, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, came to mind as I was thinking of this:

When I'm drivin' in my car
and that man comes on the radio
and he's tellin' me more and more
about some useless information
supposed to fire my imagination.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no satisfaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.

When I'm watchin' my TV
and that man comes on to tell me
how white my shirts can be.
Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

Somehow this seems to me like an anthem of our consumer culture and precisely where the great marketing engine wants us all to be.

Of course, each little ad or message is not really a big deal, but taken as a whole, as a constant, persistent and often unconscious liturgy of want that comes at us from every angle and nearly from birth, I think it's not unreasonable to make some connection between marketing and a general feeling of dissatisfaction with life. Isn't a person being truly content where one is and with what one has the marketing agency's nightmare? What if that spread?! :)

So, here's to being happily unplugged!

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Denise Said

This past week we both have made more shifts in our thought processes, almost an avalanche of great thoughts, than it seems we've made in a long time. I wonder if happiness has a snowball effect? (We have had quite a bit of snow this season - but no puns intended.) My first new thought this week was about fun and expecting that one day fun will come along and hit me over the head, and damn it, I would know it was fun! Fun will happen only in the future and when I'm having fun at that point, I will know it. I've been saving a few dollars for future fun and now I need to spend it on something I wasn't expecting to have to spend money on. We were in the tub the other night and I was sharing my disheartening feelings about spending this money on something other than fun. And you said to me, "Well, isn't going to Colorado fun?" (We're planning on visiting my sister in her new Colorado home this summer.) Your statement hit me over the head like a ton a bricks. Fun is right now. Fun can happen all the time. Fun is a perception. Yes, going to Colorado is fun. I have these expectations of how I think things are supposed to be and fun is one of them. I would tie this belief into the mass media also effecting me. The American Dream: I bought it.

The other interesting thing I learned this week, besides that according to Stephen The Beatles wrote a song entitled, "Waiting For My Ham", is something I read from Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Committed. Actually I debated long and hard whether to read her new book about marriage and finally decided to hop off my high-ego horse (I've been married for 22 years! Who does she think she is writing a book on marriage?) and give her book a try. I've put it down a few times and argued with it honestly, but was fascinated by one part towards the beginning about a culture she visited in Vietnam - the Hmong people. She interviewed the women about how they felt about marriage. She asked many of the usual questions one would think - "Where did you meet your husband? Did you know he was special right away? What do you believe is the secret of a happy marriage? Is your husband a good husband?" The grandmother and the other women just looked at Liz and didn't understand what she meant. They even laughed at these questions. (And this was not a translation issue) There was no great romantic story of how the Hmong women met their husbands. The men have their activities, the women theirs and their marriages just are. It was so simple. They didn't have expectations in their marriages. They were never taught that their husbands/wives were supposed to make each other blissfully happy. This struck me deeply. For so many years I've expected the fairy tale of Prince Charming sweeping me off my feet, feeding me chocolate, and whisking me away to some exciting place - and I have to say you did all that - chocolate Haagen Daz and New York City, but I continued to always except more and sometimes things that I couldn't even explain, but I expected you to know.

Well, I look forward to the creativity of March....it's started already my dear! (btw - Happy Birthday!)