"You can't have everything.
Where would you put it?"
-- Stephen Wright
You know, this is sort of funny and at the same time, it is sort of true. I don't know where I would put more stuff now, let alone have everything. In fact, I've been contemplating letting things go and how I might do that.
When I was 21, I was in the Air Force, 3,000 miles from California in Dover, Delaware and was recently married. We lived in a 40' mobile home (trailer) at $85 per month and that was 30% of my income before taxes. We didn't own one piece of furniture, and had very little else. Our first official piece of furniture was a $20 unfinished wood nightstand that I painted yellow with an antique finish, which I still have possession of 43 years later.
It would seem that now I have more than enough. Until recently, I even had stuff in a storage facility. What a big business that has become. They are everywhere. The truth is that the more stuff I have, the less it seems to mean to me. As I think about things all around me, there is very little that feels important. Yet, it all must have been very important, or at least important enough to buy to begin with. Who even remembers why?
Sometimes I long for those days when I had almost nothing, but the only good reason to go back there would be to have my whole possession-oriented future ahead of me. Or, perhaps if I could go with the knowledge I have now, I might make a different choice.
Who Needs All This Stuff? Yet, It Didn't Arrive Of It's Own Free Will, Did It?
Spread Some Joy Today--Joy doesn't require anything except a desire to feel it.
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