I recently heard someone say that IKEA was like paradise for the twenty-something. I find a visit to IKEA far too stress-inducing, far too infuriating, to qualify it as a paradise. I offer it, instead, as a parable: IKEA as Life.
When you first walk through the doors, everything holds promise. You oooh and aaah at each new example of sleek Swedish design, touching all the fabrics and looking through every room in their tastefully-decorated faux-homes. Everything is fascinating! You can go anywhere in the store you want.
As you progress, you realize that to get things done properly, you actually have to follow a predefined path. If you cut across the middle of the showroom, you are probably going to miss out on something important; possibly something you want. You start to follow the arrows. You stop looking at everything quite so carefully -- the clean lines are no longer quite as amazing.
Further along, you realize what it is you want out of the store. You stop taking the time to dilly-dally in the flashy showroom, and you beeline straight for the plain wall-display of whatever it is you have decided you need. The Hemnes bed, perhaps you decide. It's just what you want. It will satisfy you.
Some people talk to a salesperson and get their Hemnes bed. "Certainly," the salesperson says, and that customer's hopes are translated directly into results. Some customers, however, hear the dreaded words, "Nope. We're out of stock." No matter how much you might want, you realize you did something wrong along the way. You made a wrong turn. You didn't ask soon enough. You decided on the wrong path altogether, and you should have chosen something else; but now it is too late because you already have your heart set on the Hemnes and nothing else would do. It was simply a matter of luck. Sadly, you adjust to this fact, and move on.
Then you try to get a coffee table. Kolsvik, you think. You have decided that you deserve a Kolsvik table. You move through the rest of the store; you may pick up a few knick-knacks along the way. Minor things that make you happy, but nothing that will really affect you one way or the other. Some things you put in your cart and you have no idea why, but in they go regardless, pressed up against all the other items in your collection. Sometimes people get in your way; you can ask nicely or you can just shove your cart right through them. Sometimes you are forced to just sit and wait for someone else to slowly amble down the aisle before you can do anything at all. Sometimes you accept this in good grace, but as you go along it gets harder and harder to stay calm, and you feel more and more prone to kicking something.
When you finally get to the very end of your journey, you look around you. If you are lucky, you will find the Kolsvik coffee table you deserve, a result of all your hard work. If you find that missing, you might look for your Enetri bookshelves, a runner-up prize of sorts. You might very well come up empty-handed on the bookshelves too; you might feel as if the entire trip has been a complete wash. Not only did you not get what you wanted, you did not even REALIZE it until the very end. Until it was too late to try for something else. Nothing worked out the way you planned, you might think. What the hell was the point of going to this damned store in the FIRST place? All you have to show for it is a stupid trash can. And...well, to be honest, some fairly exciting salt and pepper grinders. There is that neat pair of scissors. And a medicine cabinet that wasn't strictly necessary, but does allow you to see the back of your own head which is always nice. The down pillows sure are comforting to you, here at the end of this trip. And those wine glasses...oh, remember way back when you picked up those wine glasses? Man, that was great!
Everyone has to pay the final price before you actually get out of there -- and the long, slow wait can either be pleasant, if you have someone else with you, or torturous if you are going it alone. And after you walk out through the smoothly sliding doors, all you have to look forward to is coming back to the same store, again and again. Until you get what you went in for. Until you get it right.