A few months back I watched a travel program where they were visiting a family living in an old windmill in Holland. The host of the show asked the family (with 5 kids) how they managed living in such a small space. To this the husband answered that you really don’t need more than one chair for each person in the house. How right is that!
We live in a fairly big house, everyone with their own room and even one to spare. Although we have all this space, we tend to stay in the same places in the house. I am sure that we could manage just fine with 30+ square meters less but somehow we don’t.
When I look around the house I see so many things – furniture, toys, clothes, books, electronic devices and the list goes on. We have so much and still I think that we actually use so little of it. So why do we have all this? To avoid empty spaces? Because that is what others have? Because buying things gives us pleasure?
Research shows that buying things does not give us long-lasting happiness and also if we thing about it, we know that the things that really makes us happy cannot be valued in money.
So why is it that we add so much value and importance to things and measure our happiness in them?
Why do we think that having a certain quality of life means having certain things?
Why do we define ourselves by the things that we own?
Truth is that I don’t really have all the answers to all these questions but thing that it is something worth thinking about for all of us.
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