[ECON] POSSESSING "THINGS"

[Maher]

<font size="+2" color="000080">POSSESSING "THINGS"</font>

"The lovely 'toy', so fiercely sought,
Hath lost its charm by being caught."
http://www.dca.org/articles/possess012900.htm

Myvesta.org - Myvesta.org
© 2000 Myvesta.org, Inc.

How true the above statement is when it comes to purchasing "things."

You see an item. You want it. You just cannot live without it.

You don't have the money to purchase the item. You buy it anyway. You take it home, look it several times and forget about it.

Your friends compliment you on it once, then forget about it.

Two months later you question why you ever bought the trinket in the first place. But you rarely get rid of the item. It becomes part of your "collection."

You men in the reading audience are thinking, "Yep. That describes my wife perfectly. The house is full of trinkets. The yard is full of gadgets."

Women who are reading this are nodding their heads, "Boy, is that my husband. The garage is full. The basement is full. The garden shed is full."

We North Americans tend to surround ourselves with possessions. The more we possess, the happier we think we will be. Our motto is "Give me, give me, give me." Our crest depicts a hand holding a credit card.

People surround themselves with possessions for many different reasons.

For some, it is to make up for the fact that they were raised in poverty. They never owned anything during their childhood, so they want things now.

For others, the need to possess goes far deeper into the fabric of their lives. "Things" fill the void left by lack of love and self worth.

Some buy possessions for other people, including children and grandchildren, because they want to be remembered and loved.

Some busy parents surround their children with things in place of parental attendance and guidance.

Some people buy out of loneliness.

Some people impulse-buy to impress friends and fellow shoppers.

Stop, all of you. Stop right now. Do not purchase another thing until you have examined your own reasons for possessing it.

Look around. Do you honestly need anything? Do you use what you've got? Do you appreciate what you've got? Do you even know what you've got?

What are these possessions telling you? What do they mean to you now, after the thrill of the shop?

Why did you buy them? Is your having to possess things directly connected to your addiction to shopping? If so, you are caught in a vicious circle: spend - possess - spend - possess - spend . . .

Whose money are you using to purchase stuff?

Who isn't getting paid because you are purchasing unnecessary possessions?

What important daily rations are you doing without to gain useless gadgets?

What is your family doing without so that you can possess?

Who are you punishing by frivolously spending money?

Are you using money that can be better spent, money that could be tucked away for your old age?

Are you charging on credit cards already maxed to the limit?

Ask yourself, "What is my family going to do with these things when I die? Who cares about this collection? Are they really going to be appreciated? Are they all going to end up in a landfill?"

Do yourself a favor. Stop purchasing unnecessary items for six months.

What is the definition of unnecessary?

* Anything that is not included in your regular monthly household expense.

* Anything that is purely decorative.

* Anything that is purely nostalgic.

* Any item remotely resembling something you already own.

* Anything that "speaks" to you.

* Any item that is whimsical.

* Anything that needs dusting.

* Anything that you always wanted but never had the money to buy.

* Anything you will use - eventually.

* Anything you have to make room for in a garage/tool shed or barn.

* Any unnecessary item for a member of your family (birthdays and anniversaries included - give them an edible gift).

Stop buying as a recreational past time.

Stop shopping when you are lonely. Stop shopping when you are browsing with friends.

Start giving things away.

Pay down your credit cards by holding a gigantic garage or auction sale.

Take charge of your life and financial future.

Possess less.

Save more.

Fair use for educational/research purposes only!

BUY GOLD!

 

[iamnoturmaid]

I actually think that if you do without all the non-necessities, you appreciate the little that you have. I try to teach my kids that having the latest and greatest is a waste of money put to better use. . A lot of the people I know have a lot of things but are one step away from bankruptcy .

 

[Dobbin]

A subject near and dear to my heart.

Probably the premier book on this subject is "Your Money or Your Life" by Dominguez/Robin. Opened my eyes.

See their website at http://www.newroadmap.org/default.asp

Another good one is "The Simple Life" ed. by Larry Roth.

Best regards,
Joe

 

[Lee P. Lapin]

LOL, Maher.

The real question is- do you own your possessions, or do THEY own YOU? I bought a copy of _The Power Of Gold_ by Peter L. Bernstein this past weekend, and it opens with the following story:

"About one hundred years ago, John Ruskin told the story of a man who boarded a ship carrying his entire wealth in a large bag of gold coins. A terrible storm came up a few days into the voyage and the alarm went off to abandon ship. Strapping the bag around his waist, the man went up on deck, jumped overboard, and promptly sank to the bottom of the sea. Asks Ruskin: "Now, as he was sinking, had he the gold? Or had the gold him?" "
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bernstein-gold.html

 

[zeda]

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, you just said perfectly what I needed to hear.

 

[The Mountain]

My list of "Wants" is short, and generally useful, being comprised essentially of 4 things: A diesel blazer (bugout, and hobby-energy focuser), a few guns, a motorcycle, and a Macintosh 8600/300. Beyond that and a house, I have little else I even think about buying. My wife is the one who tends to clothes-shop for the sake of shopping (and yes, it is shopping, since something almost always gets bought. She never seems to have any clothes, though). I always hope she will get off the "gotta look sucessful" jag, but it will take something more drastic than one little pig to stop that kind of attitude.

 

[Maher]

<center><font color="000080" size="+2">My Wood</font>

By E. M. Forster</center>

A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt in part with the difficulties of the English in India. Feeling that they would have had no difficulties in India themselves, the Americans read the book freely. The more they read it the better it made them feel, and a cheque to the author was the result. I bought a wood with the cheque. It is not a large wood ---- it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? Don't let's touch economics; the effect of private ownership upon the community as a whole is another question ---- a more important question, perhaps, but another one. Let's keep to psychology. If you own things, what's their effect on you? What's the effect on me of my wood?

In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property produces men of weight, and it was a man of weight who failed to get into the Kingdom of heaven. He was not wicked, that unfortunate millionaire in the parable, he was only stout; he stuck out in front, not to mention behind, and as he wedged himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flanks, he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle and being woven into the robe of God. The Gospels all through couple stoutness and slowness. They point out what is perfectly obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, that furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps, and the whole tangle of them makes you think twice before you accept an invitation to dinner or go for a bathe in the Jordan. Sometimes the Gospels proceed further and say with Tolstoy that property is sinful; they approach the difficult ground of asceticism here, where I cannot follow them. But as to the immediate effects of property on people, they just show straightforward logic. It produces men of weight. Men of weight cannot , by definition, move like the lightning from the East unto the West, and the ascent of a fourteen-stone bishop into a pulpit is thus the exact antithesis of the coming of the Son of Man. My wood makes me feel heavy.

In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.

The other day I heard a twig snap in it . I was annoyed at first , for I thought that someone was blackberrying, and depreciating the value of the undergrowth. On coming nearer, I saw it was not a man who had trodden on the twig and snapped it, but a bird, and I felt pleased. My bird. The bird was not equally pleased. Ignoring the relation between us, it took fright the boundary bedge into a field, the property of Mrs. Henessy, where it sat down with a loud squawk. It had become Mrs. Henessy's bird. Something seemed grossly amiss here, something that would not have occurred had the wood been larger. I could not afford to buy Mrs. Henessy out, I dared not murder her, and limitations of this sort beset me on every side. Ahab did not want that vineyard ---- he only neeeded it to round off his property, perpartory to plotting a new curve ---- and all the land around my wood has become necessary to me in orderto round off the wood. A boundary protects. But ---- poor little thing ---- the boundary outght in its turn to be protected. Noises on the edge of it. Children throw stones. A little more, and then a little more, until we reach the sea. Happy Canute! Happier Alexander! And after all, why should even the world be the limit of possession? A rocket containing a Union Jack, will ,it is hoped, be shortly fired at the moon. Mars. Sirius. Beyond which -­ But these immensities ended by saddening me. I could not suppose that my wood was the destined nucleus of universal dominion ---- it is so very small and contains no mineral wealth beyongd the blackberries. Nor was I comforted when Mrs. Henessy's bird took alarm for the second time and flew clean away form us all, under the belief that it belonged to itself.

In the third place, property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it. Yet he isn't sure what. A restlessness comes over him, a vague sense that he had a personality to express ---- the same sense which, without any vagueness, leads the artist to an act of creation. Sometimes I think I will cut down such trees as remain in the wood, at other times I want to fill up the gaps between them with new trees. Both impulses are pretentious and empty. They are not honest movements towards money-making or beauty. They spring from a foolish desire to express myself and from an inability to enjoy what I have got. Creation, property, enjoyment form a sinister trinity in the human mind. Creation and enjoyment are both very, very good, yet they are often unattainable without a material basis, and at such moments property pushes itself in as a substitute, saying, "Accept me instead ---- I'm good enough for all three." It is not enough. It is, as Shakespeare said of lust, "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame": it is "Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." Yet we don't know how to shun it. It is forced on us by our economic system as the alternative to starvation. It is also forced on us by an internal defect in the soul, by the feeling that in property may lie the germs of self-development and of exquisite or heroic deeds. Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properlyl they are still entangled with the desire for ownership, where (in the words of Dante) "Possession is one with loss".

And this brings us to our fourth and final point: the blackberries.

Blackberries are not plentiful in this meagre grove, but they are easily seen from the public footpath which traverses it, and all too easily gathered. Foxgloves, too ---- people will pull up the foxgloves, and ladies of an educational tendency even grub for toadstools to show them on the Monday in class. Other ladies, less educated, roll down the bracken in the arms of their gentlemant friends. There is paper, there are tins. Pray, does not own it best by allowing no one else to walk there? There is a wood near Lyme Regis, also cursed by a public footpath, high stone walls each side of the path, and has spanned it by bridges, so that the public circulate like termites while he gorges on the blackberries unseen. He really does own his wood, this able chap. Dives in Hell did pretty well, but the gulf dividing hem from Lazarus could be traversed by vision, and nothing traverses it here. And perhaps I shall come to this in time. I shall wall in and fence out until I really taste the sweets of property. Enormously stout, endlessly avaricious, pseudo-creative, intensely selfish, I shall weave upon my foreshies come and take it offf again and thrust me aside into the outer darkness.

NOTE: I shamelessly snipped this essay from this site:

<a href="http://bjv2.readworld.com/englishlearn/novel/mywood.htm" target="web">LINK</a>

I hope you enjoyed it!

[ 05-30-2001: Message edited by: Maher ]

 

[Jesse]

Maher:

This is a most excellent thread!

Some years ago while living in Jerusalem we were visited by a messenger of GOD and we were told to get rid of EVERYTHING we owned that we did not need to get through "the DAY."

We had to throw out aprox. 40 years of photographs, more in fact since many of them were familial and quite old. We were to get rid of all pictures from walls, all books (thousands of dollars worth) except the Bible, our collection of 250 or so movies, all furniture which wasn't absolutely necessary, all jewelry - even our wedding rings (which the LORD let us have again later, but only those) our cameras, and so much more it would take pages to articulate.

We were left with bare WHITE (we were told to paint them white) walls, a few scatter cushions, and enough dishes for each of us for one meal, and one place setting for a stranger. And the "tools" we use to make our living in this world. Nothing else.

We weren't asked, we were told and this was only one of the things we were instructed to do at that time.

When GOD tells you to do something, you don't ask why, - you just do it! Trust me on this one!

That was a few years ago now, and we have lived very simply ever since. Yes, we own a modest house but it isn't ours, - it's GOD'S. We consider that we own NOTHING, even this computer that I type on is a tool I use to do His will and it belongs to GOD.

I mention this because there is no more liberating feeling in this world than to care NOTHING for anything that is of this earth.

Rule of thumb is: if you can't walk away from it, get rid of it immmediately... because "IT" has "YOU." Same sentiment as in another post above.

I always liked the saying: "A man is rich in proportion to the things he can do without. Sell your goods, keep your thoughts." (Thoreau).

And my own observation, written when I was seventeen though I didn't know it's full meaning when I penned it:

"Simplicity is the end result of ALL complexities."

In the peace and love of Christ, - Jesse.

P.S. I've never liked shopping or shopping malls anyway!

 

[onengrace]

This is a wonderful thread.

Mahar, thanks for the post. I read it over again. Truer words were never spoken. What a beautiful feast of words for the soul.

Jesse, you have again made a profound statement....one that speaks to me.

As to property being heavy...this is true.
I have felt a terrible weight on me most of my life. Last year I started giving away stuff and I am not lying when I tell you that the weight lifted off of my me. My dear little mother was a horder...had tons of stuff that permanently grounded her to one place without the precious joy and freedom to move about. She lived in a world of terrible weight....living in the past with mementoes, pictures that she reviewed frequently, stuff that "she would use someday" and on and on and on.
I own no property so that isn't an issue but do you know what causes me the greatest weight now......my files and paperwork. I have this continuing urge to gather it all up and toss it all in the dumpster. Truely paperwork is a stone around my neck weighting me down. I believe if anything gives you this feeling it should be paramount to get rid of it.

My son and I just last night were having a conversation about the weight of possessions and how people literally give their minds and souls over to the possessing of things.
I related to him a very old country saying that has stuck with me over the years.
"We come into this world through a hole and we are going out of this world in a hole. Nothing inbetween matters as it is all material and really immaterial." We certainly can't take any of it with us when we leave here.
We shouldn't build up our treasures in the material world because nothing of it is lasting....If you don't believe that just go buy something electronic and see how long it lasts

This thread goes counter to prepping though. I have been prepping a little over a year and now I am having the very same feeling of weight....a yoke around my neck. I am getting this urge to give it all away and be free of the weight. I find not happiness in this weight but distress.

This thread is excellent food for thought.
Mahar and Jesse.....yes, I did enjoy reading it very much.

 

[Jesse]

G'morning Grace:

About the preps. Don't ask me how I know I just do. The preps we gather now are not just for us if they are even for us at all. I feel strongly that Yahweh has a use for them that I don't know about yet, and He will show us in His own good time. After all, - they're HIS preps! Something about the loaves and the fishes comes to mind...

If you give them away, give them back to GOD and ask Him to show you how to use them in a way that will please Him the most.

Then don't even THINK of them as yours again. Every little item you buy, think of it as buying it for a work our Father is going to do through you. You'll feel very much better I promise! - Jesse.

 

[onengrace]

Hello Jesse,
I have had people ask me why I am prepping and out of my mouth came words I was shocked to hear myself say. I'm prepping for someone else to find because I probably won't be here to use them.
Yes, I heard myself say this but had to ask myself.....did you just say this? Now what's that supposed to mean....are you going to be dead or gone or what?
How's that for strange or maybe NOT so strange after all. Now I am torn between the two thoughts of the preps being a weight and yet I feel that I have to keep doing it. Perhaps I will amass a certain amount and then literally walk away from it all.
Mysteries and more mysteries.

 

[Deena in GA]

I agree, this is an excellent thread. Owning preps, though, I find to be a very freeing experience. I can't explain it well but there is freedom in being well prepared. Probably it has to do with what Jesse just said. I feel good in knowing that I have enough to sustain not just our family, but extended family and anyone else who may need it. It has already made it possible for us to give away quantities of food when someone is in need.

 

[onengrace]

Deena,
that is true....by rotating the preps there is food to give to those that need. I take my out after a year so there is plenty to give away.

 

[Fractal 1]

Fine thread ...

My mother-in-law told us we weren't "successful" because we didn't have nice "things."

She's right. We don't have nice "things."

What we have is a successful life.

We have a little guy who's going to be 17 months old in a couple of days. He's a miracle. I am blessed to be able to work at home and care for him. Watch him. Be with him.

How is it possible to mortgage your future in the pursuit of owning things? How can I think of myself as successful if I leave the family for 12 hours every day so we can buy the latest greatest toy? How can I justify spending half my day away from my little guy just so we can own more stuff? Will more stuff prove that I love my family? Will my kids think I love them more by being absent?

I was told I wasn't investing in my future.

I can not imagine that pursuing things will insure any reasonable future for me or my family. The future is my 20 year old daughter. The future is my 14 year old daughter. The future is about to wake up and ask for his breakfast.

Everthing else is nonsense.

Every night I can hold my wife as I drift off to sleep is the end of a great day.

I'm one of the only successful men I know.

 

[Cowardly Lion]

what zeda said!

thank you all, this is stuff i needed to hear right now, too (concerning a purchase i'm contemplating from cheaper than dirt!)

cowardly lion

 

[Flint]

Yes, some rare people are true compulsive shoppers. Remember Imelda Marcos and her shoes? And yes, shopping fails to satisfy their real needs much like eating binges fail to satisfy an ex-smoker. But compulsive shopping is a disorder, and not that many people suffer from it.

Jesse's story is one I can relate ONLY to the time I worked in a mental hospital as a summer job, and there were two inmates (oops, "clients") who "heard the voice of God", which told them to do equally stupid and non-negotiable things. I sincerely hope this disorder is even rarer than compulsive shopping. Controlling these people "God talked to" was a brutal task for a mere minimum-wage attendant, believe me! As Jesse makes clear, when God "speaks", mere common sense cannot compete, and they do what the voices tell them without any question at all.

Now, for normal people, we tend to get real utility from everything we buy. I'll concede right off that if we could calibrate all of our purchases in terms of utility per dollar, we get a lot more from some than from others. Sometimes we buy something nearly useless, but hey, this is what yard sales are for! But most of the time, we don't regret our purchases and we genuinely enjoy our collections of "stuff".

So if you look beneath the superficial, this cloying sentiment of being "owned by our possessions" sounds like the sour grapes of someone who lacks the possessions he'd like. Not many of us lust for the carefree life of the starving hobo, fancy free and with nothing to lose. And the starving hobos have never liked it either. As the old saying goes, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and *rich is better*!"

A rewarding life lies neither in owning less stuff nor more stuff, and those who can't be satisfied by what they have, aren't going to be more satisfied by having more OR less, but rather by learning to appreciate what they DO have. "Doing without" is an artificial virtue, praised mostly by those without the option to do better, and as quickly abandoned when that option becomes feasible.

So I'm sorry, but I actually enjoy things like nostalgia, decoration, whimsy, and recreation enough to pay for them. In moderation, to be sure, but still I get real value out of them. Normal people do.

At the risk of sounding like a complete cad, I think the anonymous person who wrote this was motivated by frustration with their spouse, who gets real value out of things they do not and vice versa. After all, most of what stores sell doesn't interest us, but *somebody* buys it. Surely THEY don't need it, right?

But the best solution to the "problem" of different people having different needs, wants, and tastes should NOT be to recommend that everyone give up everything and claim nobody has *enough* use for any of it. The best solution is to recognize that there really isn't any problem here in the first place, and we should be joyful that people can find so many different ways to make their lives more worth living in their own eyes.

 

[lynnie]

gee, when I saw this title I thought it would be a post about unloading worthless FRn's and getting "stuff" instead.

Good distinctions though, on what is a wise prep and what is a waste.....

 

[Reliance]

This will lose some in the re-telling, but here goes.

An ascetic (he renounced the world) was given a 2nd begging bowl by a passerby. The 2nd bowl filled up with food that he could not eat readily, but it was useful in case there was less food offered the next day. But mice ate the food. A friend gave him a cat. But he had to feed the cat. A villager gave him a cow to feed the cat. Then another gave him a pasture to feed the cow. And then he got married so the wife could look after the cow.... and so on!

 

[Jesse]

Y'know Flint, - I just hope that GOD permits me to be present when He finally does "SPEAK" to YOU! I have an overwhelming desire to see the look on your face at that time...

BTW, - I never said GOD "spoke" to me, - I said He "sent a messenger." - Jesse.

 

[Blue]

I think owning "Things" is just fine if you use them. And when you don't use them anymore give them to someone who will. I refuse to give up my childrens pictures of when they where babies, they are the greatest joy I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
Most, not all, of the people I personally have known that give it all up, simply never really had it to begin with. I simply call it "Spring Cleaning" ~ give away what you don't use.
There is a very fine line between balance and unbalanced and each individual has their own idea of what that is.
To say that having things is wrong and then say that storeing prep supplies is okay is simply a justification to own what they personally think is balanced.
I could go into a lengthy discussion of how the Creator provides for his own, but that is better taken up on the other board for those of you who are REL post sensitive

 

[Jesse]

blue:

I hope you don't think I am advocating that anyone else do what I in part described that WE as a family were instructed to do.

This was a VERY PERSONAL set of instructions and I barely skimmed the surface here, - on purpose.

Of course you shouldn't throw away your photographs of your babies. I wouldn't have either under any other circumstances, but...I guess y'had to be there.

Anyway, the point I am making is that what happened to us is between us and GOD. The Bible does not demand these things of you and unless or until our Father does, then you have no reason to tread the path we've been told to.

Again, this was and is a PERSONAL set of instructions for our family only. I know that some of you will understand this and some never will. That's why I'm not about to reveal our experience in it's entirety, - well, not on the internet anyway.

I hope this adds a little more clarity to my above post.

In the peace and love of Jesus, - Jesse.

 

[Blue]

Jesse~ I understand and respect your religious beliefs, though do not agree with you. And thats okay
http://www.infowest.com/business/g/gentle/overcon.html

Edited to incorporate link

[ 06-01-2001: Message edited by: Blue ]

 

[suzy]

Maher, what a great post. I can truly understand the "things owning you" theory. Over the years we have purchased some things that make our lives easier, and other things which become a nuisance after a short period of time.

Several years ago we started ridding and pitching. We found that large parts of our house were used for "stuff" and not for us to live in.

We no longer buy the same kinds of things as we used to. We buy much less, and are happier. We dont have to dust the stuff, figure out where to put something else that has no function, or keep shuffling possessions. We could care less if we impress anyone with our lifestyle.

We are simple and practical people. Interestingly enough, after our "change" many of our friends started doing the same thing, getting rid of a lot of stuff, and living simpler. Maybe it boils down to jumping off the merigo-round, the continual spend and earn senario.

Take the dollar amount of useless stuff you might have purchased, apply it to your overhead or mortgage, and you will be stunned at the impact.

Our decision to change purchase behavior was not about money, it was about a simpler life style. We do still purchase, and buy those things which we need. Personally, I would rather have the dollars in my pocket, rather than another trinket we have no place to put and forget about in a month or two.

suzy