Are your possessions like the peacock's feathers, a token display to convince prospective mates? Are your possessions little tombstones marking the passed pleasure and the moments of glory gone?
Stop. Look inside. See how rich the internal life is and you may let the placebos you accepted in lieu of elusive durability, the imitations of an eternal life, slip from your hand.
Life is not spirit. Life is not flesh. Life is not internal. Life is not external. Life is not going to be. Life is. Life is while the spirit is in the flesh. Life is when the internal balances with the external.
A fixation on having stuff throws the balance off and attenuates awarness of being spirit in flesh. It increases the value of companies but decreases the value of your company.
Note: I am sorry if this is all sounding a bit mystical and opaque. I am fishing for the spiritual mistake at the core of materialism. Materialism, the empty consumption itself, has bad enough consequences but I don't think it is effective to treat that as a root cause when it is perhaps a symptom. Attacking materialism is no more unamerican than H. D. Thoreau: he'd be shaking his head sadly to see how we use our stuff to hide from life. Curing or curtailing materialism is a most arrogant ambition but otherwise, it is curtailing our lives in the long run.
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