In a world of materialism, we often spend too much energy on material things. First, to acquire them and second, to maintain them. Maintaining is even the harder part as it is more costly from a time and money perspective.
I think many people are unaware of the concept of the owner becoming the owned because it is not easily apparent. From a relative standpoint, most of us have more than we need and we tend to gravitate towards things we want and not necessarily need, focusing most of our energy on them.
It's a bit subtle but things we own can end up owning us through emotional attachment and the ever increasing demand of maintaining them. And like the sunk cost fallacy, we unwittingly become the servant.
The sunk cost fallacy is a human phenomenon in which we justify increasing our resources(e.g time and/or money) on a investment based on what we've already invested(sunk cost) despite having new evidence that shows that the expected benefits will be less than the cost of continuing investing in it.
For example, I'll continue throwing money to maintan a car I bought for a good amount of money despite knowing that the engine is no longer good. Or staying at a boring event till the end because I bought the ticket for a steep price.
Similar to the sunk cost fallacy, most of the things that we own that end up owning us are partly due to the sunk cost of acquiring and maintaining them. Since, they're mostly unrecoverable, especially the time part, we figuratively own and see them as treasured chests like they're part of us now. Which is somehow true but where did the desire to own all these things come from?
The other part is emotional attachment. There's an uncle of mine who has a garage of exotic cars which he routinely brings out just to dust them off, take them for a short drive and put them back in. It's obvious that he loves exotic cars but what's not obvious is how he has become emotionally attached to them because I dare say you touch a single car and all hell will break loose.
I still can't fully understand how people can become emotionally attached to things that it significantly influences their behaviour, usually subconsciously. Emotionally attached to things is even more powerful than the rational bias of maintaining them because the latter is changeable based on circumstances. While the former is hardly changeable.
What I've come to notice with all the life explorations so far is that perspective matters and being conscious is foolproof in a sense that one can't be trick or swayed by superficiality. Much of why things end up owning us has to do with lack of control and awareness.
Consciously.
Whether we're mentally asleep or not is debatable but becoming conscious on things we own will bring about a gradual realisation that a good portion of them are simply unnecessary, they usually lead to creating more clutter that eventually has to be disposed off. This is even more evident when we're going through a transition like changing location.
Perspectively.
Distractions or divergence into owning things isn't the problem per se, the real problem is our lack of personal structure. For the lack of personal structure is the reason why many of us fall for the distractions. Personal structure in this context, simply means the ability to strictly differentiate oneself from his or her environment. Do we really have clear boundaries or are we just following the crowd?
We own things and some of them own us. I think the goal is to own things without them owning us. The reason why it is a goal is because it is liberating from the standpoint that all the unnecessary mental/emotional baggage that comes with things owning us falls flat on the ground and disappears.
As always, everything is simple enough in theory, it is not so in practicality. It isn't the intention of things to own us. Things are just things, or aren't they?
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.
