What has your stuff done for you lately?

What are we so attached to our stuff?

We spend a lifetime collecting it: filling first our toy-box, then our room, our computer, our car, and eventually our homes with it. When our homes begin overflowing, we fill the garage and if we run out of room there, we pay the storage industry to stock more of it.

Sometimes we toss it. Or we sort it. There's a whole other industry set up now to help you declutter and organise your stuff. Occasionally we recycle it. But mostly, once we've tossed and decluttered our stuff, we go and get more. New stuff.

And it gets worse. We collect stuff in our minds. Painful thoughts about the past. Worries about the future. Concerns about the debt we've accumulated from buying all of our stuff.

Why?

We love our stuff; yet it cannot love us.
We protect our stuff; yet it offers us no protection in return.
We make sacrifices for our stuff - our money, our time, our energy, our emotional health, even our relationships with others; has your stuff ever sacrificed anything for you?
We collect our stuff; yet the more we have, the less we appreciate it.

We think our stuff makes us happy. Or valuable. Or good enough. Or attractive. Maybe successful.

It's bullshit.

When was the last time a piece of your stuff made you happy? For how long did the feeling last? Was it the stuff that gave you the feeling or the thoughts you had at that moment? I'm betting it was the thoughts. Your car can't make you happy. Neither can your handbag. They're inanimate objects. You make them mean something by what you tell yourself in your head. Or put another way, your thoughts about your car make you happy.

Recently I was sent a link to a TED talk given by Adam Baker. Haven't heard of him? Do yourself a huge favour and listen to his mind-opening story here. One night, Adam and his wife took a moment to stop, and step outside of the socially-conditioned discourse that they had previously accepted without question: the one that says go to school, study, go to college, get in debt, buy a dwelling, get in more debt, and fill it with stuff. They began to really look at the story: What effect was it having on them? They had followed it without question until now but did they even want it?

Turns out they didn't.

So they got a new story, began taking new actions, and radically changed their lives.

How about you? What has your stuff done for you lately?