You Don't Need It

You don't need it.

I'm sitting amongst piles of stuff. There's two courses -- and I suppose each one is good for the economy in its own way. One is to spend, the other to save.

The fact is I've done both, but spending comes more naturally. Not because I really think I need stuff, but it's more natural (to me) to accumulate and surround myself with stuff than not. I see the Simple Living magazines at the store and figure it's just another fad to make money off of.

I've saved money a little bit. It's hard to do, not just because of imagined needs but because of actual needs, like paying the bills and extraordinary expenses that come along. Rainy day stuff. Some of this is also paying for other people's rainy day stuff. Altruism when you can't avoid it.

The big thing about having so much stuff -- and here I'm talking library types of stuff, videos, DVDs, CDs, books, etc. -- is that there's not really any time to enjoy it to the max. Time is what it is. There's all the time spent in sleep, then in work, then in family duties, then in eating, then in watching American Idol. And after you get all that done, you've got about two hours left. Music, as an example, involves real time. You don't listen to 10 minutes worth of stuff in three minutes. So whatever you happen to have, there's no time to enjoy it.

Leading to my main point: You don't need it. It's piled up. And that's where it shall stay.

Saving money is the way to go, which of course can also be detrimental to the economy. It's the way to go because rainy day disasters -- needing a place to live, for example -- is a lot more important than the junk you surround yourself with.

There's an old thing, a saying I either made up or heard somewhere; it's from years ago. Which is, If you can't have everything there's no point in having anything. I don't agree with that in absolute terms, but it definitely pops the balloon of collecting.