On Buying Things

Apart from non-food items, I can go a long time without buying anything.

The longer I don’t buy anything I can’t eat and the longer and more often I stay away from things that look so nice to buy, the more work I produce to share with people. I am willing myself not to feel bad when I don’t have nice things. It’s hard to concentrate on the value of experiences, though, when much of the Earth’s land is covered with stuff and waste. There’s too much stuff for me not to ignore it. My awareness of it is so sharp that even when I’m in nature, I don’t just stop knowing that there’s a lot of stuff to buy to at least make myself look better when the inside of my is a lot, disheveled mess.

I don’t buy much I can’t eat since things don’t reduce my wanting to cry (but I don’t. My eyes aren’t dry. I think my acceptance level is just strong enough to beat out my desire to cry). I don’t spend time going out to browse in stores to see what nice things there are to buy since doing so won’t improve my well-being, it won’t inform me of much, it won’t build my character, it won’t help me cope with difficult people, it won’t help me maintain my sanity with people who are insane, it won’t improve any skill I’d like to be better. Buying things doesn’t teach me anything.

I don’t think that the high volume of things the Earth has on it is healthy for the Earth. I feel that the high amount of stuff makes the Earth sick. I care about the Earth more than people quite frequently because people have treated me wrongly and the Earth never has. I feel bad that people don’t show the Earth much acknowledgement, much gratitude. I feel that millions of people have even forgotten that they live on the Earth, that they think more on living in their hometown, or in a metropolitan area than living on Earth. A large number of people see more things than anything naturally of the Earth. People think a lot of what they should buy to feel a temporary relief of life than to face what’s inside them, than to consider to meet halfway, or even all the way. It’s just easier to look to things than to people, than to within themselves.

Things can’t erase the battles in my mind. They can’t erase the thoughts that beat me most of the time.

I can live without buying many non-food items for the rest of my life.

Thinking about buying something should only occupy a small percentage of my mind, I don’t let my thoughts linger on buying anything.

I admit though that my mind lingers on having money. Interestingly, I think a lot about financial security, about having money in the bank but almost never about buying something. Maybe I think having money puts me at a ‘higher’ position than having a lot of stuff.

I don’t buy many things because my room isn’t big enough to accommodate much I see things as standing in my way quite often. I’m not interested in buying much because I’m interested in something permanent. Things aren’t permanent. I’m interested in having permanent feelings toward something too.

I don’t consider buying things as a hobby. It’s not an activity that represents an ‘interest’. The act of buying things that don’t nurture spiritual growth turns people into more like things and less like people.

I don’t want to buy a lot of things. They have nothing to do with my feelings They have no part in nurturing my knowledge.

Regarding knowing about money, I’m working on feeling sufficient without much of it. I’m on a long spiritual journey due to this.

I still remember the past summer when a friend of my father’s frowned at me because she said she could strongly sense that I was only going to be middle-class. She examined my face and said that the best I could be was middle-class, in a way that made it sound she believed that I didn’t deserve much high esteem.

Throughout my life, my mother has said that, judging from the gaps between my fingers when I stretched my hands out with my fingers pressed next to each other, that I was either going to lose a lot of money, spend too much money, or not make much revenue that anyone can be impressed by.

Memories are a part of people and these memories I have become a part of my identity. I figure people have negative and positive parts to their identity so I see these memories as a part of my identity. Yes, they are thoughts, really, and I can control them if I will myself to but I haven’t been able to.