Licking the Razor's Edge (2015)

Addiction #11 – Freedom from GREED
(a.k.a. Hoarding, or Materialism)
According to a recent study at UCLA, the United States (and much of rest of the western
world) has finally reached “material saturation” – a social condition where obtaining
additional things only brings marginal & fleeting emotional benefit; where the sheer
quantity of our possessions actually begins to damage the very quality of our lives.
Simply put, most of us simply own way too much stuff …
Our closets, basements, attics and cupboards are so overfilled with possessions that our
things have spilled out into the living areas of our homes. Our table-tops are covered with
magazines, our desks are cluttered with papers, our shelves are stuffed with books, and
our mantles & walls are littered with memorabilia. Indeed, 75% of the families in the
afore-mentioned study had garages that were so filled with “old stuff” that they couldn’t
park their cars therein.
Essentially, for many of us, George Carlin was right when he said that “a house is
nothing but a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE HOARDING
Like any other addiction, there is no specific threshold where one becomes “a hoarder”.
Just as every person has a highly personal way of living, everyone also has a unique set
of circumstances that govern what they truly need to “live well”. And yet despite these
vast differences, there are some general standards that all of us can use to tell whether or
not we have accumulated an amount of possessions that is harming our health &/or
limiting our true Happiness.
If you would like help identifying the arrears of your life where greed has subtly taken
residence, consider answering the following questions …
*Do you own more than one of any type of household appliance (refrigerators, TVs,
radios, etc)?
*Are your bookshelves filled? (Have you read every book you own? And of the books
that you own that you have read, do you intend to read them all again?)
*Have you worn each item of clothing in your possession at least once in the last month?
*Do you buy food for the month or for the week? For the week or for the day? Is your
refrigerator full? Do you eat at least a portion of everything in it at least once a week?
These are questions that can help to open your eyes to where you have accumulated too
many things in your life.
58