By CARL HEINTZE
In the society in which we live, buying is all, a kind of ritual which seems to be as much a part of American life as the church was in the Middle Ages.
We worship at the mall; it's the center of our way of living, we revolve around it, even as life once revolved around the cathedral. Getting there and getting back is most of the fun. We go there not only to buy, but just to be there. But buying something is, of course, part of going there.
Buying, so my daughter tells me, is not the same as shopping. When you buy something, you actually acquire it, possess it, get to keep it. But shopping doesn't always require that you buy. Indeed, it often means everything but buying.
Buying seems to be mostly a female occupation in my family.
The women in my family love to shop. They do it somewhat like a moth around a flame, circling through stores around goods they may covet. They spend a lot of time circling, but not too much time buying.
Instead they may pay for it, bring it home, try it on or out and then take it back. I almost never do that. Somehow it seems like an admission of defeat.
That's because men, for the most part, don't buy things by shopping. Instead, they walk into the store, find what they want to buy, purchase it and bring it home. Often, even if it doesn't work right, it's a major concession on their part to take it back. That presumes that buying it in the first place was wrong, clearly a case of bad judgment.
That is not true of all men, of course.
I had a male friend once for whom shopping and buying was all. It didn't really matter what he was buying. In fact, it was not the acquisition of things that brought him to full flush, it was the preparation before the outright purchase.
Before he bought, he spent weeks on research. He checked all kinds of consumer recommendations no matter what it was he was seeking: refrigerators, television sets, even cars. He knew all their statistics by heart.
When this phase was completed, he would begin to shop. He went to a lot of stores looking for what he wanted. He checked the prices and compared them. He talked to the clerks, many of whom didn't know as much about the item as he did.
All this produced in him a kind of rush. Through all of the process, his mood would be elevated. He would sing and hum and dance about as if he were in love, which, I suppose, in a way, he was.
Finally, when it seemed he was about to forget the whole thing, suddenly the moment of truth, the moment of purchase, arrived. Like a raptor, an eagle, perhaps, or a hawk, he would swoop down and carry off his prey.
That was about the end of it. For a couple of weeks he used whatever it was he'd bought and then he tossed it aside. It was used. It was no longer new.
I never could get this excited about buying something, although I must admit that, being an American, I do find there is something akin to sexual anticipation occasionally in looking for and purchasing a large item--an automobile or a new house, for instance. And like my former friend, I've found that it is the pursuit of the desired that drives the economy, not the utility of the thing that's purchased.
American manufacturers have been astute enough to realize this. Most of what they make is consumable or disposable. There is, after all, no use making durable goods to last when people are involved in always buying new things.
Take, for example, the American automobile. The fact that it is built every year, a "new" and dated model, is not so much to incorporate new and better features. The basic internal combustion engine hasn't changed all that much in the last 20 years.
In the same way, looking for a new house is a lesson in pursuit, seduction and conquest. We pursue new housing not so much because we need it--although, of course, sometimes we do--but because the process of looking is so much fun. We tend to believe that by moving to a new abode, we have somehow found a new life, we have shed the past we didn't like and acquired a new future in the place to which we have moved.
I suppose sometimes that's true, but more likely we have acquired new property taxes, bills and the need for new and expensive remodeling and furniture. It's the restless nature of Americans to think the journey is more important than the destination, the search more important than its climax, our national psyche restless and unfulfilled.
But it's sure lovely while it lasts.
Carl Heintze is an occassional contributor to The Sun.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, October 2, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.