Robe

Throughout the Year of Quarantine (which sadly is still somewhat going on) and my pregnancy, I did a lot of online shopping to make myself feel better. Obviously, this is not something to celebrate or encourage in oneself, but don’t give me shit about it, ok?

Nothing I bought made me any happier, really, with one exception: this robe. Mine is that same print but in a deep green, which they don’t appear to have anymore, and I LOVE it. It’s cotton, so it works ok for most seasons here (it’s a bit too hot for the height of summer), and I got it in a luxuriously voluminous size so I swim in it. It feels great, the print makes me extremely happy, and I just feel better whenever I put it on or even just see it hanging out on a shelf in my closet. Also, the baby is obsessed with the print.

This is the sort of joy we hope all our purchases will provide — a low level infusion of peace, content, or happiness from daily use. You get one thing that makes you feel this way, and some part of you thinks, if I only had more things that did this for me, if every pen and dish and piece of furniture in my house made me excited to look at it, then I would be genuinely happy in my work and in my family and in my life! (I haven’t read her book or watched her show, but I suspect this is the angle Marie Kondo is working for her brand.)

But sadly, this is one of the many lies of capitalism. There’s a ceiling, and it’s lower than you think. A single robe can cheer you up in the morning, but a house full of cheering objects can’t fix any real problems or make you happy to be alive.