“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
― John Lennon
“The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
“The world says: “You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.” This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
― Bertrand Russell
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Familiar Letters
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
― Ellen Goodman
One of my most prized possessions are words I did not say.
If you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose — Bob Dylan
All good quotes. Yes, most everything I own I really could care less whether I lost, except of course my kids’ pictures and a few special, quite insignificant things from people who mean something to me. My most valuable possessions are some very good memories I will always have.
They are correct, we do get burdened by possessions, bank accounts, stocks – paper, paper everywhere. I tell you what I’d like to possess (and I do everything I can to try to accomplish this) is simplicity. If your life is too complicated, you miss the most simple, sweetest moments. They are what count.
The things I buy. The crap I invest in – tools, guns, livestock, etc.
It ain’t mine. I just care for them so that one day, when my son needs them most, they will be here for him and his family…
If things go the way I think they will (and they will), then this stuff will be hard to come by – if not impossible. “Stuff” doesn’t rule my life, but without this stuff, there IS no life… at least, not for my son.
He is free to find his own way in the world. But if everything falls to shit, there will be at least one place he can retreat to…