Life's objects

The stuff that surrounds us is important for our soul

We sometimes fail to realize that we can develop very meaningful relationships not only with humans and animals, but also with objects. It is pretty clear that people can develop strong feelings towards places and houses, and even furniture. But sentiments towards the smaller physical objects in our lives are also important. This unfortunately tends to be forgotten in societies where such physical objects are abundant and too easily available. The result is that we fail to give adequate importance to those numerous objects that surround our daily life, to our own detriment.

This fact is, I think, a significant contributor to the modern sense of alienation, which is so pervading. We too often go for the cheap, disposable alternatives. This is short–term thinking and a moral mistake. Humans invest objects with meaning through the effort, time, love and excitement that goes into producing and acquiring them. In an ideal world all such production should really be a labor of love, and the objects which surround us should be contributing to numerous aspects of our lives. This is why it is very important for these objects to be aesthetic in addition to being useful. Our daily objects are part of our emotional attachment to the world. Whether we realize it or not, we do in fact get attached to small things like clothes, toys, blankets, dishes, and countless other seemingly trivial objects. We continually invest them with our emotions, memories, attitudes, thoughts, etc. They become our little friends, our little comforters. To treat these objects with disrespect is to unwittingly treat all these aspects of ourselves in the same way. Whenever we dispose of a familiar object we tear a part of our soul away, however small. And it all adds up.

This is a good example of an instance where more is less. There is a limit to how much of ourselves we can invest in the outside world. Quantity here is at the expense of quality, in the same way that we can only develop a deep and meaningful relationship with a relatively small number of people. Spreading our soul too wide usually results in shallowness. And this is also true for children. Children will find it hard, if not impossible, to develop true relationships with the objects around them if those are too numerous. It will have the same effect of emotional shallowness, thus significantly reducing the depth and emotional quality of their lives.

For these reasons toys and other objects which are going to surround them should be chosen with care, the way friends ought to be. They should be best thought of as potential companions for life, and they should therefore be objects that are invested with all the possible value that humans and nature could give them. As much as possible they should be endurable, holistic, aesthetic, thoughtful, interesting, comforting, deep, multi-layered, possessing meanings on many different levels, from childhood to old age (in the same way that really good children books can be read with enjoyment by adults), and very importantly, they should be objects that age gracefully, or even better - like good wine - improve with age. It is always better for our emotional well-being to choose the high quality and expensive, rather than the cheap and disposable. Ideally, we should strive to come into relationships only with objects which are truly labors of love. This is not only prudent (you will end up spending much less money in the long run), it is important for our well-being.

Toys and other childhood objects should be such that they are never going to be sold in a garage sale. The old toy means much more than we think to the child, and their sadness in getting rid of it is a sign of health which we all too often fail to understand. (In general, both we and the world would be much better off if we listened to our children more carefully. They are naturally more pure and less corrupt than we are, and as such have a lot to teach us that we have forgotten). In our fleeting, changing, unstable and alienating world we should strive to give our children as much safety, comfort, familiarity, and warmth as we possibly can. And the objects we surround them with are an important part of this effort.

For the same reason it is a mistake to accumulate things in a way that will force you to get rid of some of them later on. Acquiring an object should be thought of as akin to entering a relationship, something that you are going to be emotionally invested in, and should be thought of as a potential companion for life. If you manage to think this way in making those decisions, you are likely to make very different decisions. And your life and the lives of your children will benefit from this.