Every year, without fail, Black Friday arrives like some national ritual. In the United States, it is the day after Thanksgiving when retailers launch huge sales and shoppers rush to grab deals online and in stores. Part celebration, part stampede. We line up at dawn, scroll through endless “doorbusters,” and convince ourselves that forty percent off is basically a moral victory. It is a routine so ingrained that we rarely stop to ask the obvious: do we even want this stuff, or are we just conditioned to react?

I am not pretending I am above it. I fall for the mindless consumer reflex all the time. Just this past Black Friday, I bought a hoodie with actual dirt stains on it simply because forty percent off felt too good to pass up. Did I need this hoodie? No. Do I already own a perfectly fine version of it without dirt stains? Yes. Yet the urgency to be part of something everyone else is doing, combined with the novelty of a “good deal,” somehow made it feel impossible not to buy. I could see myself doing it, knew it made no sense, and clicked “purchase” anyway.

That is exactly how mindless consumerism keeps winning. Brands do not just sell products. They sell urgency. Countdowns. “Last chance” warnings. The subtle anxiety that if we do not act right now, we will miss out on something important. What we actually lose is intention. Purchases turn into a reflex. They become detached from any real need. We end up chasing the dopamine of a bargain instead of choosing things that genuinely matter to us.

The irony is that Black Friday does not signal abundance or joy. It signals fear. Fear of missing out. Fear of falling behind. Fear that someone else is getting a better bargain, or a better life, through a better price. So we keep clicking. We keep filling our carts. And the cycle keeps turning.

But we are allowed to pause. We are allowed to ask whether a day designed to empty our wallets should have so much power over our choices. Maybe the most radical thing we can do is not grabbing something on sale, but choosing to want less in the first place.

Black Friday will be back again next November. It always is. But our impulse to consume does not have to follow the same script. Instead, we can choose the best Black Friday deal, the one that comes from saying no.