When people contemplate how they are going to reward themselves for the hard work, they have put in, they look to many material items as the answer.
In the thought process of our continuing to stay motivated doing the things that we spend our days doing, we are often times trading our lives for exactly those items or experiences.
These experiences remain entirely confined within the construct of our daily lives. We work diligently and like the proverbial carrot hanging on a string just in front of the rabbit or horse, we continue to trudge forward with an expectation of eventually eating said carrot. When that moment of eating that carrot arises, we feel a great sense of accomplishment for our having worked as diligently as we have to achieve it.
Yet, when we deconstruct, what has genuinely transpired, we have sold ourselves in order to accomplish the task of claiming the carrot.
Our lives are being traded by our working so that we may secure material rewards in packages, presumably of our own choosing.
Such is the state of consumerism, which has accelerated humanity for the last several thousand years. It was presumably a different scenario when each day was spent hunting and gathering in order to survive. There was an even exchange that transpired as a direct result of the need to survive.
As society evolved past that stage and accelerated into a new era of trade and barter, an entirely new concept arose in which a person might exchange the fruits of their labor in favor of something above and beyond the core necessities of life.
In that awakening, consumerism was born. Once there was a definitive plan in which value was identifiable and, the concept of trade was adopted, humans became in part enslaved by their own possessions.
In order that one might secure something of magnitude, there would be presumably some form of material consideration from which that trade was born and resolved.
Taking this to modern times, we are confronted by the inbred desire to acquire, which has been taught to us at the earliest age in life.
This need to possess becomes overwhelming, and ultimately consumes the majority of people who unknowingly sell their entire lives to the prospect of having very specific possessions, none of which carry over into any form of an afterlife.
When we hear of others who are espousing the virtues of having no material possessions whatsoever and enjoying that freedom, it feels contrary and foreign to us on many levels.
The next time you consider making some large purchase, take into consideration what you are truly trading for it, before you make that choice.
Happy Sunday!
Brian Weiner 