Lessons learnt via moving
14 July 2009 3 Comments
One thing packing up and moving an American household causes a person to realize is the inordinate amount of schtuff we collect. I personally abhor clutter, and thankfully my wife even feels the urge to purge from time to time.
Really though, do we need to keep around tablecloths we never use (and that don’t fit our table), the five surplus and ordinary glass vases that came with flowers for the wife, the three extra sets of drinking glasses that we probably won’t have cabinet space for in our next home? You get the point. What’s more is that we didn’t pay for most of these things I’ve mentioned. They were gifts or hand-me-downs; are we obliged to keep such things; will we hurt people’s feelings if we don’t?
The process seems to reaffirm the fact that we live in a materialistic, consumerist culture.
Reminds me of a part in Up when Carl had to get rid of all his accumulated stuff in order to save the day.
I attribute it to our (humans) sentimental attachment to things in general.
While it may be easy as a Christian to suggest an ascetic solution to our culture’s materialism, that would be a rash judgment in my opinion. We are physical beings inhabiting a physical realm. As much as I might bemoan clutter — and I do bemoan clutter (and in the particular shoddily crafted, mass produced objects collecting dust in so many American homes) — God made stuff and made it to be manipulated by humans, the stewards of His creation.
That said, material objects are not bad in and of themselves. So-called materialism is, I believe, simply another perversion of something the Creator created and deemed good.