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Today's
Meditation:
It's not a
coincidence that the most fulfilling times of my life have
happened when I had the fewest things, fewer possessions
than I normally do. Possessions tend to complicate
our lives more than they simplify or enrich it, but we
tend not to see this fact because we've convinced ourselves
that we want the things in question-- and now that we
have them, we don't want to admit that we were wrong when
we thought they would make our lives better.
It's
very difficult to feel or be free when we have a lot of
possessions. They require us to have someplace to
put them, which tends to be our homes, and if we were to
give up the homes, we'd have to give up the possessions,
also. We'd have to work much less if we had fewer
things, and if we desired to have fewer things we could
focus on other things that are much more important, like
quality of life, learning, helping others, and so many
other things that don't involve possessions.
One
of the most interesting dynamics of our possessions is the
fact that we didn't even want many of them until we saw
someone else with them, or until we saw an ad about
them. Until then, our lives were fine without those
things, but afterwards we somehow "needed" them;
and when we got them, even if they were in some ways
valuable, they complicated our lives at the same
time. This is especially true nowadays when so many
of our possessions now have monthly fees tied to them, and
keeping track of the subscriptions they require now
complicates our lives rather significantly.
I
don't want my focus in life to be on things. There
are some things I need to do my work and to live
comfortably, and I have quite a few things that I don't
even need, but I want my main focus to be on the people in
my life and what I can do to help them make it through
life well. It's very easy to think that I'm not
attached to possessions, but I know that I am and that I
probably always will be. My task is to minimize that
attachment so that I can maximize the other attachments
that mean much, much more.
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