Why you don’t really need what you want
I lived in Paraguay for three years, and the best thing about it was that It was very close to Argentina. Me and my family would go on road trips all the time. To get to the Andes mountains required driving for at least sixteen hours through a barren wasteland, but it was always worth it because of the view and the Argentinian steak.
On Semana Santa one year we drove to some salt flats in Argentina. It was a very long drive through huge mountains. Then, all the sudden it was completely flat for over a hundred kilometers. I got out of the car and started walking around. I take a step and I can feel myself sink into the cold, thick mud. I decided to take off my shoes so that I could walk around, That was the last time I ever saw them.
Later that day, when we were back at the town we were staying in I was looking for my shoes when I realized that I had left them at the salt flats. It was too late to go back and get them because we had already driven six hours in the other direction. I was very disappointed because I liked those shoes and because now I had to wear flip-flops in five-degree weather(Celsius).
Luckily for me, there was one store in the town that sold shoes. One might think that shoes that cost eight dollars would be terribly uncomfortable or would fall apart immediately, but I ended up wearing them for eight months after I got home. They were really out of place with everybody else’s shoes that I was around, but it made me realize that you don’t pay so much more for shoes because they are more durable or more comfortable but because of the logo.
Since then I haven’t focused so much on the brand but the quality of something I’m doing. I think that that is important because it makes you less easy to manipulate and you can see through what companies are trying to make you think. I’m not saying that I’m immune to the advertising but I do try to get something because it is good and not because of the brand. I think that it doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes when you can get something that works just as well for thirty.
I think that this lesson can be applied to other things too. For example, my brother likes soccer and he plays in a club in San Isidro called Barcelona. It is not for poor people at all. But in Paraguay, he played in a different club that was not for the elites and I have noticed that they are very similar. What I’m trying to say is that many of the things we do and buy are actually very similar in the end so paying much more for something that doesn’t work any better than what you have does not make sense and we should try to stop.