Am I Alone in My Iniquity?

I used to drive a Jaguar.

It was a terrible car. If I didn’t sweet talk it every day – “Hi there, sweetie-pie! Shall we go for an amazing ride? You are so sleek and sexy today!” – if I didn’t say something like that, it would break down. Some infernal light or another would appear, or some loud noise would start barking, or sometimes it would just stop dead in its tracks. Then off to the repair shop for a bill that varied between ten million and twenty million dollars, or so it seemed.

I loved that car.

But eventually its unreliability and its incredible expense shook me to my senses. Now I drive a reliable, boring car, but not a day goes by that I don’t pine away for my old love.

When I got the Jag, I truly thought I would just get it out of my system. Drive it for a few years and move on to a new phase. A “been there/done that” finality to my craving. But unfortunately, not. I still crave. 

Having something of a psychology background, I believed Maslow’s Hierarchy. When you satisfy a need, you can move on. Certainly Maslow was not talking about totally unnecessary, ridiculously expensive luxuries. But still, I thought there might be some relevance to my “need” to drive a fabulous car. Well, my craving is alive and well - this ridiculous, morally unsupportable (because of gas guzzling), unaffordable craving stalks me still.

Has this ever happened to you? You thought you would satisfy a silly “need” and you are never really satisfied? Is this a typical human failing, or am I alone in my iniquity?

©2012 Margery Leveen Sher