There is something about shopping that zaps the energy right out of me. 

I can work out for a half hour or play hockey for an hour and a half and have more energy afterwards than I do following a shopping session at the mall. 

My daughter and son-in-law just got a dog. They tell me that dogs expend more energy sniffing around than they do going on a walk. So you can run your dog ragged, chasing him or playing fetch, but he won’t use up as much energy doing that as he does just sniffing every tree and hydrant he comes across on his walk. 

Maybe we’re like dogs when it comes to shopping.

There is something else I noticed about shopping: I slow down.

When I’m walking from our car to a hockey game with my wife, I motor. My pace is fast. Sometimes Lily even complains that I’m walking too fast and that she can’t keep up. 

Usually she yells that at me from about 30 paces behind – haha, just kidding. 

But when I park our car at a mall, immediately I go into slow mo walk mode. As I follow Lily into the mall, my pace sinks to a saunter and my legs and feet feel like they are lead.

I notice that other people walk like that too. 

Sure there are some people who are power walking through the mall but many are trudging … like they’re on their way to a life sentence for some crime they committed. 

There is something about shopping that just simply sucks the life out of you. 

I wonder if it is the music they play. 

Maybe there is some kind of secret message in the music to dull our senses and make us least resistant to the ploys of the sale clerks or signs and stickers that read, “sale”.

The other day I went to a mall with Lily and our daughter, Karlie. I thought the we were there to shop, but Karlie had an agenda and it was to return items and buy different stuff. 

So what I thought was a shopping trip turned into more of a waiting and people-watching trip for me – waiting outside of stores I didn’t really want to go into and watching the people who were trudging by. 

When we were finished, in that whole mall of 140+ stores, there were only two that I had been interested in entering. I went into several more stores but not on my own volition. Lily and Karlie had a few stops they had wanted to make. 

When it was all over, it was dinner time. I was so tired, it was good there was a restaurant outside the mall we could eat at. I don’t think I could have made it back to our car; it was too long a walk.

After dinner I had revived enough to make it home and to contemplate doing it again sometime … not soon though!

Here’s the thing: There are things that exhaust us yet take very little physical output. One of those things is contemplating what happens to us at the end of life. Some just don’t think about it, while others try to convince themselves of something comforting. It zaps our energy. The Bible tells us that God loves us and has a place for us to spend eternity with Him. Expend less energy and believe Him. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find that zaps your energy? Leave your comments and questions below.

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