Consumerism and Comparison: Wonderful...

Hello people, this week I would like to introduce to you another member of our incredible Noisy Movement team. The talented, bright and shining light who is Frannie Wise. Frannie has taken a new route for the Noisy Movement this week and hopefully she opens your eyes to things we all face everyday: the monsters of consumerism and comparison.

“I’d like to thank Ikea for the topic of this blog. Not for its meatballs or identical flat-pack furniture (though I'm grateful for these things too) but for its tagline the Wonderful Everyday. It's said best by a husky Swedish man but the sentiment rings true regardless of language, culture, age or social group. As consumerism rears its ugly head, we’re forced to want more, consume more, until we’re swallowed up by its big jaws and are left sitting in the belly of the beast wondering why we’ve just spent a grand on a new phone when the old one worked just fine. With so much choice dangling above our heads, we're often too busy looking up to realise what's right in front of us.

Is it comparison that drives this lust for something bigger, better? Take Mark Twain who defined it as “the death of joy” which, though a little overdramatic, remains relevant in our world where information and images are as accessible as the air we breathe. Yet we do breathe it in, filling our lungs with data until we’re suffocated by #hotdogsorlegs and people eating cinnamon for fun. Not to mention that person in every friendship group who likes to compare everything from weight to mates to Tinder dates, how many Instagram followers they have and the number of miles they’ve ran before you’ve even poured a bowl of Coco Pops. Now if you take all of that and combine it with the proliferation of social media, you end up with Today's Society. It’s no wonder we struggle to take a step back, to forget that our lives go further than the little rectangle in our pocket that screams “look at me!” like a crying baby on the bus that everyone hopes will get off at the next stop. Comparison can be healthy, but it can also steer us up shit creek until we’re drowning in self-doubt with no chance of resurfacing. That’s why, now more than ever, it's important to find solid ground amidst the wash and plant your feet firmly upon it.

Despite the watery analogy, it’s not all doom and gloom. We can’t escape comparison, nor should we have to view it as a constant negative - it can be inspirational and potentially motivational if you change the way you look at it. To paraphrase the words of Jane Austen, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a good fortune must be blessed with no cellulite, no bills and no problems. Ah, wrong! Nearly every person on the planet filters their life, subconsciously or not, siphoning off the bad bits to reveal something that appears shiny and clean. Also let’s face it, everyone's guilty of looking at someone’s holiday snaps from Spain and hating them for it, glaring angrily at the screen whilst our half-hearted and half-eaten sandwich is going soggy in the rain. That’s natural and unavoidable but it needn't ruin the present. Start setting something that sparks envy as a goal instead of an unattainable ideal. That’s the best thing about seeing so much of people’s lives – it’s glorified eavesdropping and I like to call it research. Comparison can show us what we want, what we can strive towards and also what we think would make us happy but in reality is not so great (see Airpods).

Besides, I like to play what my mum affectionately calls the 'glad game' - finding something to be glad about no matter how shit your day is. Are the flowers out? Wonderful. Sunny on your way to work? Lovely. Think of even tinier things like those five glorious minutes of snooze, letting the morning seep in whilst you sleep in. Trying a new shower gel and smelling of mango or letting that man go and dancing on your own, catching up with friends over pretentious coffees made with beetroot and pulverised bee pollen and god knows what else. Listening to radio music in the car like you did as a child and listening to heartbeats too. What's your neighbour got to say about his new hedge trimmer? There's a sale on at B&Q. Bargain. 

These little things are what make a good life good. Not just shiny new cars and shiny cheekbones; filtered content with a lack of any real contentedness. So live the life you've got and learn to appreciate the things that don’t make it on to your Instagram. Enjoy the Wonderful Everyday.”