You have lots of... things

The hearse pulled into my family’s driveway at the appointed hour. My parents mentioned that an artist was stopping by, though I had no idea the artist’s entrance would imprint so indelibly in my mind. From his ginormous, black hearse, to the wild hair and beard, this man-in-black was the antithesis of the early-1970s, suburban world that I inhabited.

My adoptive parents were thoroughly suburban. We had lots of stuff, and hungered for the stuff that we didn’t have. I thought nothing of this – it’s how all my friends and I lived. With one sentence, however, the artist showed me another view of all this stuff, initiating a conflicted relationship with stuff that I’ve been working with for 50+ years.

Repurposed hearses are really big station wagons that
can haul lots of things.

As he entered our house, he hesitantly said “You have lots of… things.” The pause on “things” was pregnant with meaning, and even though I was scarcely of school-age, I grokked the layered meanings implied by the gap. I had never really seen my home before that moment. It was absolutely, jam-packed with things. Things everywhere! Many things to look at, quite a few things that had never been used, and entire rooms that were staged to host activities that rarely occurred; a dining room where we didn't eat, a guest room for guests that didn't come, and a living room where no living occurred. After hearing that one line, I looked around and saw the whole scene in an entirely different way. And having glimpsed what was behind the curtain of accumulation, I began a decades-long path that selectively embraced and performatively rejected the acquisition of things.

Over the past few months, I’ve been imagining all the things I’ve ever owned stacked in a pile in the backyard. It’s a huge pile – I’ve owned lots of cars, bikes and skis, not to mention all the daily garbage that’s produced in relation to being fed, clothed and housed. Nearly everything in the pile held the promise of making me happy, or at minimum, held the hope of scratching some perceived itch. It's sobering to think of the volume of this pile - I've scarcely resisted the dopamine hits that accompanied replacing, updating, boredom-abating, upgrading and expanding my collection of things.

I don’t have any answers or pithy insights to report, though I can sense that a shift in my relationship to things is continuing. Knowing that the majority of the stuff that I buy will be on the imaginary pile within just a few years has shifted my perspective. I'm buying less, and more actively factoring in longevity and repairability when contemplating purchases. 

How about you? What is your relationship to things? Has it shifted over the years?