Lesson #14

    I find it utterly embarrassing that in society today we would choose to add another car to our collection or buy another pair of diamond earrings, rather than cherish the millions of wonders that surround us on a daily basis. It is as if society can never be satisfied with the provisions that many of us were born with. My fear is that society is already beyond repair, and we will relinquish this world to our future with nothing more than the craving to fill our souls with material possessions. It is sad to say that most of us still want the new iphone, or a shiny new car— when there are people in this world that don’t even have the luxury of a steady income. We tend to forget the importance of mental well-being, and those suffering from poverty. This greedy nature we express is something that will haunt those who fail to realize that a shallow life will never lead to true joy. We think that we can just throw away our problems and replace them with mass-produced items.

    It is not just materials that we discard. Humans seem to have a limited threshold for anything of sentiment. We live in a world where much more than just milk is labeled with an expiration date. Even friendships are often set with a time-limit. I think most of us have those friends that we spend time with purely when we see them fit to our necessity. These would be the school friends, and the workplace acquaintances of the world. We choose to not form these relations further, because we do not rely on emotional connections to fulfill ourselves; we instead are captivated by what we see on store shelves. Just as Eighner said in “On Dumpster Diving,” “Even if I had a home with extensive storage space I could not save everything that might be valuable in some contingency.” The problem is that we seem to mistake the word “valuable” as something purely materialistic. No price tag can be placed on most of the wonders of the world, yet we seem to limit ourselves to be enslaved by objects that can be easily replaced. This is the reason why our country is so wasteful; people have refused themselves to think of the smiles we see on the faces of others as something to treasure. We would not be so careless if we started filling ourselves with mental reassurance, rather than the items that can be held in our grasp. I think it is crucial to understand that a flat screen tv cannot fix a broken heart, and a faster car cannot drive us away from our problems. We instead need to focus on building ourselves as people, not building the mountain of overproduced plastic that we will leave to our families once we are gone. I regret to inform us all that we seem to cherish possessions over physical relationships. The bond of hearts that we make with the real people in our lives should be what fills our homes, not the most expensive china, or the newest surround sound speakers. If we are really limited to the things of value we should keep, then we need to stop buying what will make us temporarily satisfied, and then throwing it away in next week's load of trash. We should all take a minute to remind ourselves that having the most in style clothes will not make us more loved, and maybe then we will stop pining to look presentable on the exterior. I urge us all to stop recognizing ourselves based on how much we own, and begin to see each other based on the quality of our characters.

Lesson #14: Life is about the emotional connections.