I realized the other day that a few things had changed in the forty years I have been paying attention to society (before that I was a teenager and pretty much in my own navel). I looked around and here's what I saw - you see if you can guess what it means.
Lots and lots of storage facilities.
Very big houses being built on tiny plots of land.
Rent-to-Own places everywhere.
Ditto for Title Loan establishments.
Lots of stores, and inside them, lots of stuff.
We have so much stuff we have to rent spaces to stuff it. Didn't happen back a while ago. Wonder what started us thinking we had to have all this stuff?
Could blame the advertising on television, telling us we "deserved" that new color wide screen TV.
Could blame the people who made all the stuff and got it put on the shelves for us to want.
Could blame the neighbors, those "Joneses" we all have to keep up with so our stuff won't look raggedy next to theirs.
But the bottom line is, WE fell for it. They put it out there, all shiny and tempting, but we bought it, lugged it home, and plugged it in.
It didn't seem like a bad thing at the time. Didn't we deserve these things? We worked hard for them! We thought it would make us happy!
I'm not any less guilty than anyone else, but I did realize a few things.
Those big houses are way too much to dust, especially if you are both working to pay for it.
Storage facilities separate you from your stuff, so if you have to put stuff there, you don't need that stuff.
Stuff can own you. You have to do the aforementioned dusting, as well as repairing, maintaining and yelling at the kids to get off it.
Rent to Own places charge way too much interest. It's a tax on the impatient.
If you have to pawn your title to the car, you are in debt way too deep.
Going through a mall now makes me dizzy. Who ever asked us if we wanted this much choice? Choosing toilet paper alone is a several hour affair.
And buying clothes? Please! If I end up getting dizzy from playing "Ring Around the Display Racks", someone will pay.
You spend your first fifty years getting stuff, then at some point you spend the rest of your life getting rid of it. Why get it in the first place?
Yeah, I know. I did it, too. I'm in the process of unloading most of it onto my kids, so I can live the Simple Life.
I'll just go to other people's houses if I feel the urge for stuff; look at their stuff.
Then I'll go home to my simple place and not dust.
