With the new reality shows about hoarding,
de-cluttering your home, purging, organization, etc, on TV, I got thinking
about where we got so much stuff? Junk really, let’s be honest, do we really
need 4 dressers and two walk-in closets in one bedroom for two people? Or how
about 3 sets of dishes, two dishwashers, furniture squeezing us out of our own
homes. Oh and we can’t forget all those toys in the kids’ room…I mean we as a
society have gotten out of control in keeping everything. Have we really just
gotten this way or has it always been this way?
These shows get me thinking our history, as
a people on whole. I started digging and researching when did we, as a people,
start collecting, hoarding and piling up stuff around us? And more importantly
why do we do it?
Interestingly enough I have figured out
that we as a people have done this as far back as man has been around. Let’s
take a look at the eras:
Stone Age: Cavemen lived pretty simple but what
is all that piled up around the edges of his cave? Archeologists have found
interesting things when they discovered caves dated back to this era…piles of
bones, from food sources maybe? He had bowls, clubs, weapons, in his home. Why?
He only had two hands, why need more than two of anything? Why keep the piles of
bones, etc? What good did it do him?
Bronze Age and Iron Age: Now this is
interesting. This is the era of the earliest hieroglyphs, written language. I
laugh when I see what the archeologists bring out of the tombs of the pharaohs.
The people in this time honestly thought that the more stuff you had buried
with you would make your journey to the next life easier. Talk about hoarding!
These people took collecting stuff to an extreme! Even in death!
Middle Ages: This is the part in our
world’s history where it is really noticeable about the concurring and pillaging
of villages, killing for money, power, land, slaves, etc. Again we see humans
stock piling things, for what? So they can look like they are richer, better,
stronger, more powerful?
Industrial Age and Technological Age: this
brings us through the past couple hundred years or so to today. Again, as
humans, we gather, collect, create, make bigger, better, stronger, faster and
now are just learning about letting go, recycling, reusing and my favorite
saying “less is more”, but most people are still stuck in this need to keep.
During all this researching the one
question that kept coming up for me was “why do we do this?” What purpose does
it fill having so much stuff? It isn’t just to help us ‘get to the other side’,
make us all powerful, because we can, etc. I personally think that man has been
doing this because they are scared. Without stuff around them who are they? All
history has shown us is that people collected and stashed things because they
thought they were someone then. More was better then less, too much meant they
could do whatever they wanted to others and they couldn’t be stopped. Being
insecure about your self might cause one to keep everything. Remember the sand
in the hand analogy? The tighter the hold the less you have … the opposite is
true too.
I am thinking that the Future Age needs to
have some serious changes made because no matter how much we show on TV
cleaning out the junk; it will never go away unless we as individuals all do
our part. I find that I am happier, healthier and feeling better about my life
because I have let go of so much stuff.
Nature doesn’t hang on to its stuff. When nature is finished with its
old needles, blades of grass birds nest, it lets go, recycles and moves on very
free. We enjoy being in nature so much and find the beauty around us
breathtaking, why don’t we take a page from Natures book and get de-junked,
de-cluttered, get rid of the stashes of trashes and purge. Time to be free of
stuff, don’t you think?
