A Gloomy Affair

My search for a video camera goes on. I was watching one particular camera for sale on the auction site TradeMe - it was just under my limit. I hoped that when it came to the last minute people might forget about it and I'd be able to nab it while still staying within my budget. Nope. Seems someone else had the same idea as me and a slightly higher price limit. But what could I have done? Just kept going up? I have the money, but I set a limit (with good reason) - should I have ignored it? Maybe I could have got the thing for only a couple hundred dollars more; it was worth almost twice that anyway. Yes, that might have worked - but I would've lost much more than a few extra beans. I would, in fact, have lost a battle to myself. Impulse would have driven reason from the field. As it was, reason won the day - a victory, yes, but as Bilbo Baggins once observed It seems a very gloomy affair. It's never much fun to follow your head in spite of opposing emotions. Pop culture (not very surprisingly) tells us that it is actually wrong (or at least really stupid) to let your mind overrule your "heart" - possibly because if people started doing that, pop culture as we now know it would die. Fast. It lives off people following their feelings. And few resist - it is, after all, the easiest thing to do. How often do we hear I can't be bothered - It felt right - But it makes me happy - I don't feel like doing it . . . ? As far as real life is concerned all that baggage can be kept between you and your shrink. Yes we have emotions, yes they are valid, yes we should acknowledge them - no we should not make decisions based on them. It's landed too many people neck deep in the proverbial. Sorry. That's very plain and cold and horribly unromantic and it pains me to say it but it's true.