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Leah Staple

The importance of material things

Latest Post: September 22, 2009 at 11:41 AM

5 followers

I moved into an apartment with 3 friends about a month ago. It's a four bedroom spot and one of the bedrooms is noticeably smaller and worse than the other 3. To select the rooms we drew straws. Before we drew the straws I thought about proposing the idea that the person who got the worst room would get to pay less. I ended up not bringing it up. I got the smallest room of course. I felt at the time, and I stand by the decision now, that it would be unfair to bring up the reduced rent after the fact. But still, I was very pouty it all. Regrettably. I was a bit bitter because of the work I had put into getting us the apartment while the other roommates lazed in the background. I thought I deserved at least the next smallest room (which was really my first choice).

Anyway, after a couple of hours whining in my head I slapped myself in the face. What right do I have to be pouty? I have a room don't I? Shouldn't I be happy for that? Who cares that the window looks into a brick wall, isn't a small private room better than a larger shared one anyways? And still. Who the hell am I? I am privileged. Think of all the billions of people who would do anything for a room like mine. Think of all the rooms the size of mine out there that 5-10 people sleep in, more even. And I had the nerve to be pouty.

What is our relationship to our material things? How much importance do we place on our belongings, our clothes, our electronics, our wallets? And why? Isn't an intrinsically human thing to want? To want luxury and to want beyond our means? I try to do a spring cleaning every month. There are very few things I need and I feel like it is important to remind myself that. It's a very satisfying feeling to know that I only own a couple of possessions, if that, that I would never want to be parted from. It certainly makes moving easier and it puts me in the frame of mind that I should be open to moving, I should be open to starting fresh.

But there must be a benefit to the owning of material possessions. On a very evolutionary level, possessions equate to wealth and that of course in today's world adds sexual appeal. If you see a mate as well off you are attracted to him or her much like an animal would be attracted to the strongest in the group. Wealth equates to protection and great survival mechanisms. But beyond that ownership and giving meaning to materials imbues a sense of responsibility into us, right? We have to care for our items so they don't go into disrepair. The problem as I see it is that at some point we are afraid of parting with something only because of familiarity. The only answer to that as I see it is giving. Never be afraid to give something you particularly like away. It means more as a present and it frees up your own cluttered garage of significance.

It's important to remember that we can exist without just as easily as we can with. Losing something only makes life a touch more simple

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Chris Utterman

in "The tools we use"

(The Living Room)

Reply to:

Mia Vialti

September 21, 2009 at 3:08 AM

67 followers

Leah,
To me your story about the apartment is, at its base, an issue about fairness in your relations with other people. The relative good of having an apartment -- yes, that's important to think about, but it really isn't what's at stake here. If you had singlehandedly found an apartment for your friends, which had one bedroom exactly like the one you're in now and three smaller ones, and you'd invited the others to move in with you, and they'd all said "Hey, Leah, just in recognition of all your work and how great we think you are, we all think you should get the biggest room" -- well, in that case, even if your living situation were *exactly* the same as it is now, you'd feel radically different about it. So the issue here is really, in my opinion, that you feel a bit badly treated by your friends.

My advice in this situation would be to deal with it before things get too entrenched. For instance, invite another friend for dinner and have them take a tour of the apartment and say conspicuously, "Wow, how do you guys deal with such an unequal room division? Do you split the rent differently?" Surely you have some friends who are vaguely naive and regularly say things like this anyway. You may even have suffered through many dinner parties where they put your friends through the wringer unintentionally. Now put this person to work for you.

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John Stevenson

September 22, 2009 at 11:41 AM

21 followers

It seems pretty straightforward to simply say now, much after the straw draw, that you think the rent should be different. Negotiating the amount might be harder, but presuming your friends are not from Mars, they'll understand and very probably would agree.
Asking for the bigger room now, after the straw draw does seem late for me as that should have been made clear earlier as now someone else would have to give it up.

Chris already replied, in a different topic, on the importance of material possessions as tools, but there is also both a comfort and heaviness of possessions. It is easier to move with less stuff. A construction worker might want to walk with all the possible tools in the world, but it is easier for them to walk with less tools even if for some jobs other tools might have been a bit easier to work with. One somehow needs to negotiate this weight which both allows for agility, but also action.