Years ago as graduate student I visited an aunt who was a few years older than me. She was polishing her silverware at kitchen table so I helped as we talked. (She had her own set, mainly wedding gifts, that of her mother who was in nursing care, and a set from one of her grandmothers.) After more than an hour of joint effort, she casually remarked:
"You really don't own things, they own you." (She rarely ever used them, but could not bring herself to sell them.)
There are few sentences I have heard that have been as beneficial for me. That eye-opening POV made it easy for me to sell everything I had when I retired and moved to Brazil with one suit case plus a trunk full of books and Xeroxed journal articles I liked. I could get it shipped for free,* so why not? In the 16 years I have lived in Brazil, I may have reread parts of five of the books. Everything in them is now available in the internet so I brought more than I needed to Brazil.
Summary: The less material things you own, if you mainly enjoy learning and sports you participate in, like swimming, IMHO, the wealthier you are. I no longer own a car,** and when my watch battery failed a few years ago, I ceased to wear a watch. I am retired – why should I let it regulate my life? ***
I believe Diogenes also agreed with this POV. He had a plate, knife, fork and spoon, but one day threw the fork away as he could eat with the spoon. Also a grateful rich man whose son he had taught came to ask what he could give to Diogenes. Diogenes said: My sunlight, you are blocking it. These fables are probably not true, but for a long time, the idea that you are rich if owning material things has appealed to only shallow minds.. As they say, you are not going to take it with you.
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*I had a friend who was the Baltimore representative for the Norwegian Seamen. His main job was to get the seamen out of jail and back onto their ship before it sailed. The courts trusted him and doing this saved Baltimore city funds. All the ship captains did him favors in return: Special foods from Norway, etc. One favor was to get my trunk to the port of Santos, Brazil, where I "paid" for it with a present of a bottle of scotch.
**Buses and metro are free to older people, and much faster than fighting Sáo Paulo's traffic.
***My wife does that job well, without any assistance from my watch.
PS I once had many material things that go with a big suburban house. After kids had gone to college and I had sold that house and was moving into an apartment, I used my sledge hammer to make my old lawn mower fit inside a trash can. That was the most fun I had ever had with that machine. It had owned too many of my week-end hours for much too long. It disserved every blow it got.
