My friend Ben has been walking around with a Garmin smartwatch on his left wrist and an Apple watch on his right. We have the same affliction, which we will call specaholism. Specaholism is a degenerative disease of the brain which causes us to be seduced by improved specifications and functionality in consumer products. I asked Ben a little while ago what running shoes I should get to replace my old pair and he had great things to say about the Clifton 7’s, “…plus the Clifton 8’s just came out so you can get them cheap.”
“How can I buy the 7’s now that I know there are 8’s?” Fortunately, he understood my predicament. We had a laugh about our friends who would go out and buy the 6’s for cents on the dollar even though they didn’t have such and such feature that is obviously essential now that we know it exists. It starts innocently, we’re thinking it might be nice to have a new bike or a backpack or a new TV at some point. We want to see what’s out there so we jump online and start reading reviews, comparing specs and features. Before we know it, we have a dozen or more tabs open, we’ve watched videos and triangulated opinions. Sometimes the process can go on for weeks as we canvas opinions and synthesize this new information. I’m sure the enjoyment is as much in the process – learning, gaining expertise and imagining our new and improved future. Painstakingly, we search for that elusive, perfect product at the perfect price. Enough time now has been invested that it is no longer a question of if, but when we will pull the trigger.
Specaholics often experience another curious characteristic of addiction, the ‘one more time’ fallacy. We say to ourselves, ‘Once I have this new watch, that’s actually the last thing I’ll need for a while – I should be pretty much set for life.’ but the latest obsession doesn’t finally complete us, as we imagine it will, we are chasing a dragon. And all around us, relentless human ingenuity marches on; faster, higher and stronger. By standing still we somehow get the sense we are falling behind, because we are, and nowhere more so than in the realm of technology. They’re making everything technology now, putting computers in runners and fridges and light bulbs because they know we can’t resist it.
For a while there, it seemed like my life might go another way. Like the old hunter-gatherers, I was interested only in the things I could carry.
When you spend a lot of time living out of a backpack, you learn to be thoughtful about what is essential. In backpacking circles, there’s a stigma around larger packs and luxury items. I remember this being a regular topic among travellers from India and South East Asia to South America. We’d chat about our ‘must-haves’ and come up with a basic consensus on the right number of t-shirts or shoes or pairs of pants. In that world, a small backpack was as much a status symbol as was the amount of money you were able to survive on – how little you had and how far you could make it go. I remember being horrified when my dad came to visit me in Delhi and just paid the rickshaw driver what he had asked for. When I told him it should have been half the price, he asked me if he was supposed to argue over a dollar? Of course he was. I took over the negotiations at that point.
In those days, we travellers didn’t really shop or sightsee, that was for tourists, we were after unique experiences, authentic - the real-life stuff. We wanted to be like locals… to learn the language, to eat like the locals ate where the locals went and pay what they paid. Gradually, it became an ideology. Possessions can be lost or stolen, they wear or depreciate and are just another thing to worry about. “The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.” That’s from Fight Club so it’s probably true. A unique experience though, it’s something that makes you richer, and those were found on the road.
My favourite experiences were always unexpected and often free – a chance encounter or an unexpected change of plans, an idea gleaned from another traveller or a weathered book I’d found in a hostel. That used to feel quite romantic but just now, writing about a weathered book from a hostel I think about germs. I’m talking about this in past tense because it seems to belong to another life from long ago. I can’t blame it all on COVID though, if blame is the appropriate verb.
One day, at home in Melbourne, I realised I wasn’t saving for the next trip, I was actually quite enjoying being at home. Once you start nesting, it’s easy to get caught up in it. Each place you rent hopefully gets a little nicer, and why not spend a little more on a nice mattress if you’re going to spend half your life in it. Suddenly people you know have soda streams and hi-fis and coffee machines and home cinemas and a smartwatch for every wrist. It’s hard to go backwards, it’s hard even to stand still.
It’s been a record year for things. We’ve done our bit, diverting what we might have spent on experiences, travelling or dining out with friends, into a few extra comforts for home, a bit of tech and my new runners, of course. It feels like self-expression, a way of telling stories about ourselves; our tastes, priorities, status and values, through the things we buy. They are the little rewards we allow ourselves for hard work and sacrifice; the more we work, the more we deserve. What’s normal can changes slowly enough we may not even realize, let alone choose.