Obsession; Do we live in an Obsessed Society?

 

By Pamela O'Connor

 

Recently, we have begun to see the word obsession more and more. Obsession is used in simple sentences describing how we feel about food, shoes, or even people. It is has become overly used and replaced the word “like” entirely. No one can simply “like” something anymore; we must be obsessed with and think of it all the time, that is, until the next obsession comes along. We see celebrities talk about their obsessions, see postings of it on Facebook, hash tags on Instagram and start to feed into being obsessed with new trends or new people.

                One of the main reasons we obsess over things is our constant competitive need to be better than anyone else. When someone shows a liking for something, he or she must be obsessed with it. When this happens, this can make us feel that we not only love it more, but that we loved it first, and therefore, feel we have won in competing with others. This gives us an ego boost and makes us want to obsess even more. There is always something new, something that we want first and don’t want others to have. We are obsessed with having that designer bag, or looking like a certain celebrity so badly we become obsessed with changing everything about ourselves to resemble that person.

                Just the word obsession itself has leaked heavily into our culture and it is hard to resist. Headlines indicating how much we are obsessed with technology, tragedies, and current events further our obsession to be obsessed. Magazines show an obsession of beautiful women and expensive clothing, telling us we should be just as obsessed as they are. With so much to be obsessed about, there is no way to compare two objects. Everything is an obsession and, therefore, everything should be considered to be worthy of that much attention, even things that aren’t as perfect as we think.

                The frequency with what we use this word results in its losing the meaning and power that it used to hold. Obsession should be used to describe extreme love or desire, and originally it was meant to describe an actual mental disorder. But clearly that has changed. This word has gone from having a serious and almost always negative connotation to being used to describe how we feel about materialistic objects and relatively meaningless things. However, there are more than enough ways to describe our liking towards things in our lives, and finding new words to express that would greatly decrease our obsession with being obsessed.