All You Need Is Less

Are your desires your own? Separate your wants from your needs and get off the hamster wheel of more

There might not be that much happiness in the bag. Photo by Max Fischer from Pexels

The other day on Instagram, I got a little shocked because I realized I needed a bespoke serum for my skin. You wouldn’t believe the extent to which it had changed all these influencers’ lives! They felt beautiful, happy, and regretted all those years they had lived without the serum. So I took the linked skin quiz to receive an analysis kit and have an algorithm do its thing with my skin’s oil, moisture, and pH levels. I needed customized beauty treatment asap. I mean, what am I, some hopeless hag doomed to walk the earth with mediocre drugstore skin, unworthy of the age-defying miracles a bespoke serum could bring?

Alas, the urgent need went poof once I had scrolled further and was hit with an endless stream of solutions to other problems I didn’t know I had: shampoo specifically for make-up brushes, a mug that keeps the perfect coffee temperature and talks to my phone about it, a device fixing flat ponytails, tape with the power to hold over two pounds of decoration on my wall, and more. With just one click, I’d never have to deal with any of these headaches I never knew I had ever again! I’d just have to figure out my perfect coffee temperature, let my phone know, and I’d be on the path to being right as rain.