We live in a materialistic world now that we value our worth according to stuff we own – exclusive of assets! We feel rich if our wardrobes are bursting with clothes and our homes filled with clutter. A person’s outfit and accessories on him/her at a point in time is much more than the money in their account.
Check the smile on a lady’s face when she tells you her boyfriend owns a car or she owns a designer wear – epic! We spend so much (be it sales or clearance) in acquiring stuff even if we may never get to use them. Even to give some away is a problem because we feel our ‘wealth’ will reduce. Our psychological connection to things unconsciously leads us to accumulate stuffs and we end up being hoarders. Some of us begin to hoard so much unnecessary things that clutter overtakes even our sleeping spaces.
Psychologically, our quest for ‘material stuff’ is largely a reaction to inner discontent (you can deceive yourself it has nothing to do with our minds) because we look to/for external things to alleviate our inner emptiness. The sad truth is we’re only gathering junk believing we’re ‘acquiring wealth’. Shoes, fancy jewelleries, hairpieces, clothes et al are not assets in any shape or form.
Materialism certainly can give us some transient feelings of happiness and ego-inflating thrill which definitely wanes after some time (a short period of time actually). See our children behave with new toys and discard them after how many days? We always make frantic efforts to bolster our fragile egos by continuously seeking to acquire more, even to the detriment of our lives and to others. Some people use their money to acquire unnecessary stuff and expect others to bail them out when they need money to even feed.