I promised myself to stop giving objects as gifts, for good. Or to buy them. I confess that today, my sole weakness is the photographic gear, although I don't buy it without giving it a lot of thinking first, and never buy the most expensive ones, always trying to get the best value for the money. As for gifts, I will only offer experiences and consumables from now on. The kind of things that get wasted but we hold within us forever.
So here are 5 reasons to practice detachment:
1st: Objects are not what we get from this life, what we take from this life are the experiences and love bonds. And consumables, goods we can eat, drink, or smell. They are the best gifts we can give and get. Because we carry them, and they don't weigh on us, They're not a load... and even bring us lightness.
2nd: Eventually, objects are junk. Or they will become junk... if not in the moment we get them (and sometimes they are junk already!), sooner or later they will become useless and have no use at all. And the world doesn't need any more trash, it has enough of it already.
3rd. The so-called luxury items, the ones everyone dreams about, like bags, shoes, jewelry, watches, cars... they mean nothing to me anymore. I can't even give a second thought about them when I realize all the problems in the world. How can anyone be fascinated by an object at all? And how much better it is to spend the same amount of money in a trip, with a backpack and a wearing comfortable footwear that can take us to the top of a mountain and, once there, look at the stars?
4th: Objects stuff our lives and hold us attached to them. How often do we stop doing something we love just because we have to pay an installment, or get a bigger house, with basements and so on (to store the stuff!)? All of these representing a financial burden, only to have a bunch of things that literally are of no use at all, to the point we even forget we have them?
5th: Last, but not least: having too many stuff becomes an overdose, it's intoxicating. It's like the kids who get dozens of Christmas presents and end up not valuing them properly, they just stay abandoned after a while. This ends up raising some indifference for what really matters in life. And make us forget the fact that not everyone in this world is as privileged as we are. We all know about it, but we keep forgetting that.
That we should think about the others, about the people in need in this two speeds' world whenever we look at the shop-windows.
That, could we afford it, we should give and get, yes, but things that we can eat and drink. And experiences and love.
The kind of things we keep and hold forever.
Isabel
www.isabelnolasco.com
Photos: The best gifts of nature.
Taken with my Canon EOS 5D MKIII, edited with Lightroom.
Have a wonderful week ahead, my friends :)
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