Stuff.

It’s so deceptive, you know? A few years ago, I was eyeing the newest, hottest Mac laptop computer. Sleek, steely, wildly hip. Believed that once I had that, well, then all the pieces will finally have fallen into place for me. I will compose great works, write ground-breaking music, edit bitchin’ video footage. I will feel not only whole, I surmised, but whole and very, very cool.

So in a burst of capitalistic mania, I bought that laptop. And yes, it was very cool. I looked at it, a lot. Marveled at the perfection of the keys, the slimness of the high-tech design, the brightness and clarity of the screen. I conducted cursory test-drives of the functions. I wash awash with that unique brain chemistry that fosters enormous feelings of goodwill toward myself, the world, the future.

Within a week or so, it was over.

A tiny scratch appeared adjacent to the “Apple” symbol.

I lost a file.

And, in a clear act of abject malice, they released a newer version.

Now, I just had a new computer. It’s good. I like it a lot. But it turns out, to my admitted shock, that it did not change my life.

And nothing will. That is, in the words of Wayne Dyer, “no thing” will ever change my life. Not a new car, or an updated kitchen. Or a certain outfit. Not even a vintage lefty Gibson cutaway dreadnought six-string acoustic guitar with a sunburst sound-hole design.

Ahem. Perhaps I’m falling a bit off the mark.

Like I said, no-thing will make us happy. Never has. Never will. I think most of us know this.

Yet here I am, passing a mall on Black Friday, that bizarre media-created shopping craze, the unofficial kick-off for the holiday shopping season. And not only is every parking spot in that mall taken by voracious hopefuls, but make-shift spaces have been created by the desperate late-comers in each spare concrete space or unused grassy patch in sight.

Societal rules of conformity be damned – digital deals beckon, and they wait for no man.

Don’t get me wrong. I get it. The hunt for stuff is on, and the euphoric brain chemistry takes over, jet-fueled by many a venti-sized peppermint frappuccino. We’re in stuff over-drive. We are Santa’s elves, all of us.

And the difference is not lost on me either. That Mac was for ME, a direct consumer of stuff, while each of those abandoned cars represents a GIVER of stuff. But if stuff will not make US “happy” for any period of time, why do we believe it will do so for others? What is all of this about?

Well, I think that somewhere in here, we forget what we really care about. We allow ourselves to be subjects in the world’s grandest psych experiment: we are brainwashed into believing that the more stuff we charge and buy and wrap and give, the more love our loved-ones will feel.

Why, then, does this giving feel so empty? Countless times, I can remember standing, reeling, in a crowded, over-decorated mall with my wife, racking our brains trying to determine what consumable to pick up for some family member or another. And we would recognize how silly this all is, how little any forced purchase of toe-warmer or electric massager really reflects us, our values, or our feelings about the potential recipient. And how very distasteful the whole affair felt for us.

In the end, I think the problem is that none of this “giving” is really giving. It’s just accumulating by proxy, perhaps solely for the sake of that momentary adrenaline boost.

Maybe we should consider more authentic, year-round ways to show people we care, I dunno. Maybe we’d feel that euphoria, and share it, a lot more often.

If nothing else, I’m sure it would be easier to find parking that way.