Consumerism Today I was thinking about how advertisement has a great impact on people's lives. I remember being a kid and watching cartoons on TV and, suddenly, adverts about happy children playing with toys. It gave me the idea that only if I could have those toys, I would be as happy as those children. So, I would cry and beg my mother, my father and my grandmother until I have the toy or forget about it, whatever comes first. Thinking about that, I can see how we rely on things to be happy and how adverts and consuming make us unhappy. Today I'm an adult and I can accept when I don't have money to buy things without crying, but I still feel inferior about not being able to buy those beautiful clothes, that new cell phone or to travel every year, like I see many people doing on social media and, wow, they look so happy. Those things destroy us because we are used to relating happiness with buying and we think are only going to be happy when we buy a new car and travel to the Maldives. We are never happy with the things we already have and we never will, because we're all the time watching people happier than we are having better things than we do. That's a cycle.