As a society we are taught that having more equals happiness. We seek higher paying jobs, fancy cars and big houses. We see these things as symbols of success. In Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character says, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” When we start needing the next greatest thing in our life, we become slaves to constantly needing more. And often times, it becomes about keeping up appearances.
No one really says on their death bed that they are happy with all the things they have accumulated through their life. What matters most are the relationships they have built. Yet we live day to day, chasing after things that don’t really matter. And in our culture today, if we aren’t accumulating the stuff just yet, we like to pretend that we are.
In the last couple of years, I’ve seen news stories about grounded private jets being rented out for people to come and take Instagram photos. And in one case a retail store in Los Angeles that offers an actual set of inside a private jet in the store that can be used by patrons for their Instagram pictures. We are living in strange times, indeed.
Why does excess and the accumulation of stuff mean so much to us? Things are just things. And they can be taken from us in a heartbeat. When we are so busy living for the next greatest thing, we miss living in the moment. We are so focused on the future and what we will have or get to experience, that we can’t even enjoy the present. And when you think about it, the present is all we truly have.
With the current coronavirus pandemic, social distancing has forced us all into our homes. We have less options in our grocery stores and even on Amazon. We have even less options in toilet paper these days! But at the end of the day, what really matters? To me what matters is that my family is safe and healthy. And that we are making the best out of a situation that we can and getting through this crisis even stronger than we were before.
There is power in contentment with less. Having less frees us to work on the things that really matter, which are our relationships and experiencing the beauty in this world. And those are the things that money can never buy.
