As I have aged, I have been increasingly learning to let go of my attachment to ”things.”
We tend to fill our lives with lots of "stuff" for a variety of reasons, some of them quite impulsive and not very well thought out. We spend $50 on some item that seems "amazing," we use it once, it wasn't as cool as we hoped, and then it sits on a shelf...
In the course of the past couple of years we've been selling a lot of old family stuff. In essence the kids don't want any of it and the long and the short of it is that we can eBay it and use the money to buy things like food and electricity. And frankly it's better that we get rid of it now and sell it for its actual market value as opposed to it ending up in the yard sale after we're dead where it gets sold for $0.50.
It got me to thinking about the fact that our consumption driven economy basically wants us to be attached to things. You might even go as far as to surmise that that economy depends on our consumption for its very lifeblood.
Alas, I guess that makes me a "lousy citizen" in a capitalist economy because I really don't want to participate in that particular shitshow!
Other members of my extended family might find my attitude and my getting rid of stuff a bit peculiar, given that I was raised by a couple of very materialistic parents.
Bottom line is that I subscribe more to a philosophy I saw on a bumper sticker a number of years ago. It read: ”the best things in life are not things.”
I resonate rather deeply with that sentiment.
The thing about most ”things” is that they ultimately tend to only have very transient value to us. We're excited about getting some new item, we get a momentary ”lift,” and within a couple of days your excitement has worn off. Now I deliberately said ”most” things, because there are exceptions. For example, I get utility, value and enjoyment from my camera practically every day. But sadly, that doesn't hold true for most of the ”must have it” things in our world.
I see that more clearly now as I go through the process of sorting through and selling most of it off on eBay. I realize with each item that these are not things I'm going to miss. I say that, knowing that at some point I thought it was really important to have this item. We also have a bunch of stuff from our parents' estates, and it is clear they were suffering from the "consumption disease."
Life, and our behavior, are often mysterious things. And it can be difficult to understand why things are the way they are until we sit down and really evaluate our motivations.
In my case, I have been doing a lot of evaluation of what is truly important to me. If it's not a process you've tried yourself, I highly recommend it! You might surprise yourself...
Thanks for reading and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? What is YOUR relationship with "things?" Do you have many? Just a few? Are you already a minimalist? Do you feel "attached" to your things, or are they not important? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210526 00:14 PDT
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I am still amazed by your pictures... they are really beautiful. So much better than the crappy free pictures I use which I find on Unsplash and Pixabay (which still is way better that nothing).
But, my wife always feels as if I am little attached to things. Today, I was vacuum cleaning my car, something I do every second year (at most). Why? I really don't care about it. In a way, it means that I am not good at taking care of what I own either, and thus, things are quickly broken and so.
This might more deal with a sloppy attitude than in what way I am attached to things, but to be honest, I think I could quite easily throw away everything in the house, besides the computers, the TV, and my family (and the kitchen stuff since I like to make food)!
I will have to think about that for some more minutes to see if that is actually true, but at least currently that is how I feel about it! :)
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Same here :) Except my lap top and WIFI router, I can throw away anything belongs to me.
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Seems like we are quite similar then! :) Well, I have a bad habit of eating some chocolate and drinking Coke... so that would be one more struggle for me... just came to my mind!
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I'm trying consume minimum sugar, so I don't drink Coke at all.. Chocolate must be a weakness of everyone.
@denmarkguy: 02 attachments found! 😅
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Thank you!
The back seats of our car is a disaster area, perhaps because it is only my wife and myself... back there is an archeological site of shopping bags, empty soda bottles, hats, jackets, tools we needed with us at some time and goodness knows what else!
In writing the above post, one of the things I learned about myself is that I am "attached" to making sure that stuff that's still useful finds a new owner. I am no good at just "throwing it away." I take time to find someone who can use it, or I sell it.
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Well, I am often too lazy to sell things, unless it has some real value. But, I don't buy expensive things, so normally the value is so little and I am so lazy, that I just throw it away or once a year in Hungary we have this thing where you can through all your leftovers and garbage on the street for one day. You can throw out old furniture, kitchenware, pillows, broken bathtubs, whatever.... For one day, people drive around with big cars and pick up what they want (and they will often sell it), and in the end, the local authorities send big cars to pick up the rest of the garbage and get rid of it... This is a golden opportunity for me to cleanse the house! :)
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