Compare Your Car Stuff

Most of us live our lives backwards. As kids when we are growing up we keep wishing to be adults, by the time we are adults we wish we were kids again, till we reach old age when we remember our youth.

When in fact as children we should be carefree, but our society, peer pressure and parental guidance keeps pushing us to look forward “if you don’t get good grades… you will never be a ______”, doctor, engineer, accountant… you can fill in the blank.

As we grow up to be adults we look to our past more often than not, remembering all that was good in the past, family, friends, the warmth of a well-knit family unit, the laughter of close friends, the intimacy of youth. Spending more time with nostalgic remembrance rather than having a future forward mentality to secure a bright and prosperous future. The past is in the past, we should leave it there. Reveling in it does not change the future. Learning from it might, but being engrossed in it is not learning from it.

This mixed state of thinking, loooking to “what-might-have-been” makes us frustrated, depressed and often on edge with ourselves and with our lives. Leaving us with a void. This is the void that advertisers usually take advantage of – selling us things that we don’t need, will not use, nor be will these material things change our state of mind.

We start thinking if I “Have”, I will “Do”. Thus I will “Be”.

If I have a new house… a new car… a new phone… a flat scree TV… a…

I will do so many good things… do this… do that…

I will be a role model to others… an icon… someone to look up to…

The fallacy of this kind of thinking is that once you have a new house, a new car, a new phone or a new TV there is always someone else with a bigger house, a newer car, a fresher phone, or a bigger-flatter TV… and the downward spiral continues. The more you have the less it satisfies. Not to mean we should not have stuff – but more so that maybe we are going about it backwards.

The real lesson in life is to Be someone, who Does something and ends up having a lot of stuff. Hmm, having the necessary stuff.

So maybe it is time for us to Be… a role model, an inspiration, an achiever, a mover… Someone who Does… who inspires others, who enables others to achieve, who does charity, who does art, who does science, who just DOES.

Then maybe whatever we have, will not make us covet what someone else has. Because what we have will be just the right things for us to DO what we want to DO, and Be who we really are.