The process of facing and selecting our possessions can be quite painful. It forces us to confront our imperfections and inadequacies and the foolish choices we made in the past.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Inordinate desire for material possessions can become an obsession that consumes our thoughts, drains our resources, and leads to unhappiness.
Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the imperfections of others.
Abundant choice doesn't force us to look for the absolute best of everything. It allows us to find the extremes in those things we really care about, whether that means great coffee, jeans cut wide across the hips, or a spouse who shares your zeal for mountaineering, Zen meditation, and science fiction.
One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.
A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.
Unfortunately, some of our poor choices are irreversible, but many are not. Often, we can change course and get back on the right track.
Our days are filled with a constant stream of decisions. Most are mundane, but some are so important that they can haunt you for the rest of your life.
When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.
Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.