Pondering Things About Things
I have a Notes file on my phone called "Blog." Its purpose is simple. As I go about my day, anything and everything that inspires or triggers me gets jotted into this file. There are hundreds of ideas, just waiting to be turned into a blog or a podcast. While browsing my random notes this morning, one line stood out. It's a quote that reads, "The more things we have, the more time we spend on things." To be perfectly honest, I have zero recall about where I heard this or who said it. But it smacks!
When I reflect on my life and the decisions I've made, I can't help but think how true this quote is. I'm not going to share any of my specific examples, as I want you to use your imagination and consider your own past decisions. Let me set the table. You just purchased a nice thing. You traded your hard-earned money for this thing. It has value, and you want to protect this value. Therefore, you're going to spend time and attention ensuring this thing remains safe and well taken care of.
Also, if it's a cool or fun thing, it's going to perpetually occupy space in your mind. Depending on what type of thing it is, you may also carve time out of your days to use and/or enjoy said thing.
You'll maybe need to invest more time and money to maintain and care for it. You also need space to store it. Whether big or small, things take up some volume of space. Big things obviously take up more space, but never underestimate the compounding space needs of many small things. This may cause you to want/need a bigger residence, which creates an entirely new level of time and financial consumption.
On a related note, your things may also inhibit your ability to travel or live with flexibility. You might get nervous to leave your things, or your things make you too comfortable to want to leave. Therefore, things can act as an invisible anchor, locking us into place. Worse, your desire to keep your things (and accumulate more of them) may require you to remain in a job that we tolerate at best, and despise at worst. The item may be the gateway drug to the next item, and the process repeats.
"The more things we have, the more time we spend on things." I don't know if I'm thinking through this correctly, but this is how I'm processing it today. Things can have a scary pull on our lives, and our souls. I've fallen into that trap more times than I'd like to admit. I can be better. I want to be better. I need to be better. Though I can't prove it, I believe, to my core, that relinquishing our emotional ties to things (and the power they have over us) is one of the paths to a meaningful life. Or, in the simpler and wiser words of my friend Gary Hoag, just "Invest in mission and memories."