'Stuff.' It's not what makes me happy. I may like 'stuff' sometimes, but happiness comes from someplace else.
Happiness comes from what I think and what I feel and who I'm with. That's a hard concept to grasp for an old fart who grew up believing that money and the 'stuff' it would buy would solve all my (and the world's) problems.
At the moment, my work is not making me happy...I either chose the wrong field or I am one who needs new fields from time to time. I think it's the latter. I enjoyed doing what I do for 25+ years, more or less. Sure, I had times I hated it, but mostly, it was the right thing for me, most of that time. Now, it's not. I need to move on but, as many who have run headlong into their mid-50s might know, it's become tough to do. So, I'll either adapt or I'll figure out a way to move on and deal with the attendant issues such as discarding a business, coping with cancelled contracts, etc. Time will tell.
Back to happiness and 'stuff.' I've actually made a 180 degree adjustment in my attitude about 'stuff.' I look around me, at all the crap my wife and I have accumulated during a marriage that has so far lasted 27 years and I wonder: what in the hell were we thinking? The flexibility we both always treasured gets compromised when you have to deal with 'stuff.' We opted not to have children, in part, because we didn't want the inflexibility that comes as part of the baggage. But we have succumbed to the temptatation to acquire and accumulate 'things.'
Fortunately for us, despite having more than we need, we have not morphed into living, breathing, accumulators. We can, on occasion, get rid of things…even things we’ve had for years. I think we both comprehend that we’ll both be gone one day and our material possessions will have even less value and importance than they do today. So why get overly attached?
Just before my wife got home tonight, a fleeting thought went through my mind for no apparent reason, but it relates to the theme of this post. The thought had something to do with collecting things and wondering what to do with them…build a room, rent a storage facility…do nothing? It seems arrogant, in my present state of mind, to collect useless crap when people the world over could be sustained for days or weeks with the value attached to the things we collect. It’s immoral, but it’s so hard not to succumb to it. After all, we’re just people. And we can’t solve the world’s problems. And once we started down that slippery slope of what is moral and what is not, we’d discover that almost nothing we do is moral.
1 comment:
In recent years, I've increasing come to regard "stuff" as an anchor that can prevent at least some of us from exploring other paths. When I leave home, as I did for awhile in the autumn, I felt increasingly free after just a couple of weeks away. I've felt that before when I've been away for extended periods of time. I'm not sure it's a common feeling, but I've discussed it with others and found that I'm not alone. It seems that people fall into one of two groups.. those who feel comforted by being surrounded by the objects they accumulate, and those who feel freedom by not having to worry about belongings. I think many people change their thinking over time - most of the people I know who just want to get rid of most of their stuff tend to be 45+ or so. We live in quite a small house, pretty much by choice as we have never wanted anything larger. We tend not to accumulate too much of anything. I tell everyone not to give me objects. These days, about the only things I'm likely to bring home are rocks, driftwood and shells, because I enjoy studying them - but I don't even bother with that so much anymore as, instead, I just photograph things. It's really much nicer to take a photo and leave the thing where I find them -- like those deer teeth that you were looking at on my blog the other day. Anyhow, yes, I'm sort of into simplifying my life now... getting rid of stuff. Btw, you've probably heard George Carlin's "Stuff" routine before, but that just about says it all for me.
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