One of the humbling aspects of a natural disaster is that of life. What I mean by this is that we realize what is actually important, which mostly consists of our own lives, family, friends, pets and general health. I thought long about what I would take if I was mandatorily evacuated from my house and realized how much stuff I have that I don't really need in a dire situation.
We live in a society where we created a marketplace with goods and services that are mostly unneeded that eliminated the sense of inner journey. We spend money on so many unneeded things, if you disagree, look around at the stuff hanging on your wall or the fake fruit sitting on your counter. Why do we have these things? Do we really need laser hair removal?
The practicality of our needs have been defaced by fashion icons, celebrity endorsements, advertisements and jealousy. The most valuable thing in this world other than health is time. Without time, there is no money to be traded. If you question this, think what you get paid for. Your time. Now you may argue it's a service, but it took your time to learn the mastery of a trade/service in which you exchange this knowledge for money. In the traditional sense of the workplace, you're paid based on your time, whether that be hourly or salary, which is technically a thought out breakdown of your time over the span of one fiscal year.
We then exchange our money (time) for stuff. This may not sound like a fancy way of writing, but it is just stuff. We fill our homes with nicknacks of absolute unnecessary items. I am not shunning anyone. I buy THE dumbest shit. If you read the Colorado article, you'd know that I bought a buffalo hat because I thought it was funny. I am sitting on a couch with four pillows and an additional five on the top of the back of the couch.
I am not saying that we should not buy things that make us happy or that we find enjoyable, I am saying that is exactly what we should do. We should buy things that make ourselves happy, not anyone else. Imagine if you have a hobby. I am going to pick one for you, for the purpose of the article. Imagine you were into scents because they made you feel different ways, so you own a lot of candles. You researched some stuff online and realized you'd like to make soaps (I've actually watched how it's made and it's really not that mind blowing). If you hate the idea of making soap, use beer making in it's place (also not extremely difficult).
So say that you would like to create your own soap or beer. You research how it's done - read articles, watch multiple YouTube videos, read forums, really dig in deep - you realize that you need supplies to begin. Hobbies aren't free most of the time, plus you see what it takes to get the job done correctly, so you know you need to spend some money in order to begin to master the art of saponification (the art of soap making) or brewing. Say a soap making set up or a brewing set up is $500 to be in the midrange area, do you really need to mulch the front of your house or can you skip it and spend it on your new hobby? Mulching, which I do enjoy the visual aspects of, is literally a status quo action. Homes look cleaner, crisper, well taken care of with mulch, but does it do anything for you? Does it better your understanding of anything or give you any personal advantage? Not really.
Society is powerful. It's one of the most stressful aspects of life. The question replays in our heads over and over, how will others think of me? The truth is, it doesn't matter. We shouldn't do unnecessary things to impress other people. We don't need to pay for brand names just for the name. There are many of examples where a brand name truly does matter when it comes to quality, but there are also times that a brand name just costs money. You're thus giving your time to own the name of something. A Rolex tells time just as well as a Fossil watch. A Louis Vuitton purse holds your items just as well as a Coach purse (even if they’re not in right now). We should direct our intentions on self discovery or helping others instead. Plus, if everyone was the same imagine how boring life would be.
I've long had this thought of personal success after the graduation of college. The reality of landing a high paying job right of college with no experience is becoming slimmer everyday. You will see millions of millennials, myself included, coming out of college and bitching about how it is that an entry level job would requires 3-5 years of experience. It isn't possible, we just graduated. I begin to see friends of mine being successful in other aspects of life after I dropped my ego of being a college graduate. They skipped college and were becoming parents, buying homes, getting married, buying cars, traveling, etc. when I realized that success is what you make it. Buying a house is buying a house. It is a success, no matter the size or market value. For me, I like to travel, so to me each trip is a success of mine while others hate to travel. Success isn't linear and we don't need it as so to uphold the status quo.
One of my favorite authors once wrote a paragraph that made me look at things differently, which three years later as I'm writing this came to me once again. I am going to end on this, as we should all wonder:
"Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung…We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t."
-Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success
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