Consumerism

With a heavy heart I would like to talk about consumerism. My girlfriend and I have just recently made the difficult decision to go our separate ways in life which has left us with the task of sorting through and separating our household items. This activity has inspired me to write today’s post.


It just astounds me to see how much stuff we have accumulated over the years and even more to see how little of it we actually use. We have been taking on one room at a time and our process is basically sorting everything into four different piles; one with her stuff, one with mine, one for garage sale items and one for garbage.

Let’s start with the items destined for the garbage. It is just mind-blowing to see how much stuff is garbage. If it is garbage why have we allowed ourselves to sit around it day in and day out? Where did it all come from in the first place and where will it go? Now I understand a little more when I hear people say that we as a species create so much waste.

Now for the garage sale items; First of all it amazes me that we have anything that we need to get rid of. If you think for a second that we both need items to fill a space of our own and yet we still have stuff left over we don’t want. I think of the contrast between us and many people who live without all this stuff. This point is made much more apparent to me because I am currently thick into a book called “Life of Pi”. In a nutshell the book is a story about a man stuck at sea, in a life boat with a tiger for seven months. It sure wasn’t a good seven months for him but it clearly defines basic needs to sustain life. Not that I want to live like that but we clearly have much much more than we need. This idea will stay with me every time I set foot in a store from this day forth.

This book also talks a bit about once he has made land. He started hording food due to a fear of going without. I think consumerism is much like this. You see other people having stuff and we feel we need this stuff too. An excellent movie about this topic is called “The Joneses”. It is a good watch if you are interested.

Anyway, going forward I would like to challenge myself to fight these urges to not buy something just to follow the normal and to make sure I am only buying things I really need. Wish me luck. Despite his my opinion on consumerism, I am hoping that everyone will be affected by consumerism this Saturday so I can sell all of my stuff at our garage sale.