I had a peculiar trifecta of experiences the last few days. I encountered the 100 thing challenge, read some excerpts from Push (novel upon which the film Precious is based), and I bought some music. How do these fit together?
One thing stereotypically associated with existentialism is that question "We all die, so what's the point?" Studying this subject puts that question in the back of my mind frequently, such that it often skews my thought process.
Anyway, the section that stood out from Push was where the main character is forced by her mother to keep gorging herself with plate after plate of food (a process that occurs regularly, where the girl doesn't want to eat, but Mama makes her keep eating). The main effect this reading had was to put me off of eating for a day.
So I read about the 100 thing challenge, in which one guy tries to reduce his personal possessions to 100 items or less. It made me reflect on how much stuff I own (considerably less than the past, our gradual decline in square footage from 1200 to 964 to 730 has forced me to do a lot of discarding). Now, Dave (100 thing challenge creator) is of the opinion that consumerism has led to a great reduction in quality of life and been detrimental to the health of the economy.
I start to feel convicted about my lifestyle, which regularly involves acquiring new (or used, or vintage, or hand me down) stuff.
And as existentialism seems to be so fond of saying, "What's the point?"
I've decided to take a hard and close look at all my crap, and to institute a rule from Dave's challenge, for anything else I get, from now on, it must serve a useful purpose, and it must replace something else in my possession, which I must then give away, donate, or sell and use the proceeds for some charitable cause.
Ultimately I hope to do as Dave suggests, and live a life filled with meaningful experience, not meaningless stuff.
