Shopping, as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, is often a search for security. And currently there is a lot of shopping going on,  often presented as a way to get the perfect, or final, result – the perfect Christmas, the perfect relationship or family occasion. However, as Rilke reminds us, this search for a perfect, fixed completeness is futile,  since things are always changing. There is a fundamental groundlessness inside us, which we need to learn to relate to, without running from it or wishing to soothe or through acquiring things or experiences or fundamentally “fix” it:

Who has turned us around like this,

so that we always

– do what we may –

retain the attitude of one who is departing?

Rilke, Duino Elegies