What Are You Buying?

A traveling salesman comes into your home showing you his newest vacuum model, demonstrating all the impressive and convenient functions, and you take it because it works—you've seen it with your own eyes. A week or a month later your vacuum is broken and the salesman's long gone and you're out 200 bucks.

A traveling salesman comes into your home more often than you think, selling his wares, yet his offerings aren't vacuums, but values. He shows you how good they work in whatever time you give him. He can sell you casual sex in thirty minutes. He can sell you a happy homosexual life in under two hours. He can sell you a guiltless affair, a painless divorce, and a happy marriage to the much, much younger girl of your dreams-all in the span of one evening. He sells you bling up to your eyeballs with promises that it will bring you security; he sells you drugs for a thrill that ends up in a glamorous rehab center for celebrities; he sells you an ideal man who always says the right thing for the right reason, and he sells you perfect people in perfect situations, promising that you can be just like them for a small fee. You take it because it works. You've seen it with your own eyes.

Two months later, or a year, or a decade, you find out that what you bought does not do all that this salesman promised. Somehow you can't maintain the happiness, or the thrill, or the glamour, and somehow it's your fault because you've seen it work and without realizing it, you bought it—you believed it. But you're not out 200 bucks. Much more is the price you pay in the end. You carry scars from broken marriages, chains of overpowering addictions, sleepless hours filled up with envy or violence or regret. And the salesman's long gone. He could never give you your years back anyway.

Next time you turn on your TV to your favorite show, or you watch the next blockbuster that everyone's talking about, ask yourself, "What am I buying?" The business is values. When you're caught in a dilemma, and you've got to make a choice, notice in your mind to whom to what you turn for answers. What have you bought already?