"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised" (Job 1:21).
I've been thinking a lot about shopping, owning...well, material possessions, lately, thanks largely to this book
by John Naish:
It's an interesting book. I don't completely agree with what Naish has to say, largely because he believes our drive to consume more, work more, want more options, become more technologically dependent, etc., stems from our Neanderthal roots.But despite the strong evolutionary emphasis, both the book and the verse got me wondering, "Just how attached am I to my material possessions?"
I'd like to believe that I'm not that attached, that I really can live without whatever material goods I've got in my life. After all, going on holidays have proven to me that I really can survive with only a few items of clothing and without whatever I've got at home.
But if that's true, then why do I sometimes feel an innate need to go shopping and buy more? If I am not attached to the stuff that I've got, why do I want to get more of the same (or not so same) stuff?
Because ultimately, it's all just...stuff, isn't it? Why do we fill our lives with so much stuff? So much so that we transform our garages into stuff-holding rooms and perhaps even hire storage areas just to hold more of our stuff. Stuff that we may not even know we've got, or even need to have.
Sure, some of it makes a lives better or entertains us, but do we need to have that much stuff that we don't even have time to use all the stuff?
And if we don't actually purchase all that stuff, will we feel willing and able to give the money used to obtain those stuff to the poor?
Perhaps it's time to rethink all the stuff in our lives or even our need to introduce more stuff into our lives because after all, just as we've entered naked into this world, we will depart naked, without our stuff.
How attached are you to your stuff?
1 comment:
good post melody!
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