“People” often say
that material things don’t matter. But, once again, “people” are wrong. That’s
because, many material things are not
just material things. It is very difficult to separate so arbitrarily the
material from the spiritual. By “spiritual” I refer to the less tangible
aspects of reality: emotions, value, purpose, beauty, love, relationships and
so on. I am not referring to anything specifically religious.
The material and the
spiritual cannot be so easily separated, because material things are often
invested with spiritual qualities. A souvenir, even a cheap, tacky souvenir, is
not just a thing. The very word “souvenir” indicates this: it is the French
word for memory. A souvenir is worth more than its dollar value because it is a
link to a place and time which was important to us. It is the physical
hyperlink to our memories. And our memories are more than just factual
recollections. They are those, but packaged with emotions and sensations and
relationships. So if we lose or break a souvenir, although we might say that it
doesn’t matter, that it was only a silly, worthless, material trinket, it was,
in fact, no such thing. We say this precisely because it is not true: we are
trying to protect ourselves from a deeper, more significant loss.
Material items can also
become the link between us and a person from whom we are separated, or who has
died. The loss or breakage of such an item touches us very deeply, as much as
we might try to convince ourselves that it doesn’t.
Finally, an item for
which we have worked and saved very hard to be able to finally buy is, again,
worth much more than its mere monetary value. Into that item has gone our
investment in time and energy. Attached to it is the anticipation of its final
acquisition, and the joy of that long-awaited moment of ownership. These things
are not only “things”. They are a projection of ourselves, our effort, our
history, our life, into the world. This is not materialism. This is not
ownership and possession for its own sake.
Someone I know
received a small amount of money as an inheritance when her mother died, and
with that money she bought an item, a “thing”, that she treasured. When that
item was broken, this broke more than a “thing”. Don’t ever tell me that
material “things” do not matter.
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