Americans; we’re hungry. There is no other way to put it. We hunt for the next new product to buy. We live for the next time a new blockbuster movie comes out. We wait in line for hours hoping to get our hands on the next video game system. “Fourteen million Americans use illegal drugs, twelve million Americans are heavy drinkers, and sixty million are hooked on tobacco. And Five million can’t stop gambling away income and savings. And at least ten million can’t stop buying more stuff”.

We’re constantly searching for something to fill us up, something to help us feel more complete. We are all born with an inherent need for something, but we don’t necessarily understand what it is. Material things will never fill this void. No matter how much entertainment we exalt or food we eat, these things can never replace the things that we really lack. Love, hope, faith, and passion are all powerful values that cannot be bought. As we continue to play with our unlimited stock of stuff, our emotional lives have been slowly slipping away from us.

Where’s the flame that burned in us when we were children? The fire that drove us to attain an abundance of goals has been dimmed to a small candle that glows just strong enough to get us thought the day. The flame of ambition burned so bright when we were children. A child accomplishes more in it’s first few years of life than it does in it’s last fifty years. It learns to crawl, but is not satisfied. It immediately sets a new goal for itself, walking. Once it takes it’s first few steps, it falls, picks itself up, and tries again. Older, more mature people don’t do this. Some just settle for what they have and never even try for something better.

Others try to accomplish something greater, but when they fall, they lay on the ground, waiting for someone else to pick them up. Children have the ability to see things for what they are. They’re not naïve; they just look at the world with their eyes open. They haven’t been influenced or manipulated yet, so life is clearer. At a certain point in our growing up, the world tells us that we need to conform to society’s way of thinking. So aspirations turn into mere daydreams and higher ambitions are replaced by simple goals, like buying a new television set. We’re so distracted by all the electronic noise in the culture that we don’t strive for anything better. We quit growing. We quit trying. It’s just easier to sulk in our pits of despair.

It’s a bubbling cauldron of such traits as anxiety, loneliness, and low self-esteem”. When we fail to achieve our goals we fall into an apathetic state of depression. Failure makes us feel empty. The feeling of failure is naturally countered by feeling of success, but instead of striving for success, we counter our disappointment with false solutions that don’t deal with the problems You don’t feel good about the way you look so you drown your sorrow in ice cream. You didn’t get the promotion you wanted so, instead of trying harder, you go to a movie to take your mind off it.

We just don’t deal with the real problem. We don’t change to adapt to out situation. “It’s easier to buy something new and feel good about yourself than it is to change yourself” . To tell the truth, if we truly wanted success we wouldn’t constantly give up. We find sort of a tormented pleasure in out pain. Our loss gives us reason to complain and an excuse to quit. It happens so fast, our life becomes one big mistake excused for a single incident of failure. What a paradise we live in when we have the ultimate excuse to buy more material things.

We blame anything and everything when we fall. We blame others for our own mistakes. We even have the nerve to blame the God we don’t believe in. We don’t accept our inadequacies or try to improve as human beings, because we don’t take responsibility in the first place. You are accountable. You decide who you are, not the circumstances of the world around you. Your life is what you make out of it. You cannot blame anyone else for what you could have accomplished. An adolescent mistake is to blame who you are on your parents, or how you were raised. People aren’t realizing that by blaming something else, they’re just giving an excuse for why they’re not trying harder. Life isn’t always fair, but if we just take the cards we’ve been dealt instead of complaining about them, so much more will be accomplished.

There’s no limit to the stuff we buy, there will always be something new, something better than the last. The craving for it will last forever. No matter how much we buy we will never fill the void with these things. We will continue to purchase the next product hoping that finally our life will be complete. “No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man”. Is there no limit to the amount of product they feed us?

The more we take the more we need. “Consuming becomes pathological because its importance grows larger and larger in direct proportion to our decreasing satisfaction”. Food is an excellent example. We eat more and more than we need and still are not filled. If we ate just to fill our belly, we wouldn’t have such a high obesity rate in America. We eat to fill an emotional gap in our lives, and this gap is more prevalent in the United States because we have all the food and product we could ever need. But these things are merely a substitute that can not fill us. We don’t realize that food is a poor sustenance for our emotional troubles; we consume such more than our bodies can handle. All the advertisements tell us that we need food’s help to feel complete. What a misguided people we are.

What are we really losing though? If ignorance is bliss, then why not let people ignorantly buy more stuff? We are not running out. “There was a presumption that America would keep on booming, if not forever, then at least longer than it made sense to worry about” . Our supply is so enormous that we won’t have to deal with any drawbacks for a long time. It’s our emotional fulfillments that are diminishing, while our hunger is increasing. “Something more durable will have to replace that fat but fragile bubble that has been getting frailer these past two decades”.

The problem is that we’re not filling our emotional needs. The process of growth, expansion, leaning, developing, and maturing into greater human beings is essential to a quality life. Building new skills should be a constant in life, not something you do until a certain age. It’s nature; when you break down and crumble; you build yourself back up, bigger and better than before. Instead, we find solace in the constant consuming of product. When traits like character, discipline, and overall quality of being fade away, we’re left with nothing but cold, unthinking, bland units. Our life’s purpose has become the pursuit of more nothing. This is the problem, not our ridiculous fear of running out of product.

It’s amazing that throughout our lives we strive for happiness, yet in the end, our entire life was a constant struggle for a fulfillment that we never found. There are so many of us are trapped in our nearsighted selfishness for more. We’re so consumed that we can’t tell the difference between fulfillment and an obvious substitute. More fake, more emptiness, more nothing damages our well-being. However; some of us still develop and aren’t lost in the hole of more. Some go to the gym instead of sitting on the sofa watching television. Some study new cultures instead of going to the mall and fantasizing about how this new product will finally make them happy.

Some people just don’t stop improving their mind and body. These people are the ones who are happy about themselves, happy about the world around them. These people accomplish so much more than the majority of us that find it easier to complain, blame, and give excuses. These outstanding individuals are worthy of what they have, and their vitality earns them the reward of a fulfilled life. Those who choose the complicated path of ambition find a life of completeness. Those who take the simpler path of false satisfaction with material thing will find a life consumed.