You might do a bit of over-consumption for a few years, when you're young and have a little bit of disposable income / no dependents but eventually most people's mindsets turn to that of saving and becoming more conservative in view. Perhaps it's because you realise how much work is needed to earn so little? I'm generalising of course, there's a lot of old lefties out there too.

Perhaps it's because we realise the futility of searching for the next best thing. I for one have been guilty of assigning some sort of imagined value to an object. It might make you happy for a short while but that moment is fleeting and soon the (G)ear (A)cquisition (S)yndrome kicks back in and you itch for the next thing.

Without going too wacky religious on you... I think the buddhists have it right. They see no intrinsic value in anything because everything is in a constant state of change. It's an illusion that having the thing will bring you happiness; it's actually the opposite. You will suffer in different ways if you hold on to things. The idea is to let go.

Going even deeper into 'emptiness', the idea that any object is actually an object is debatable because the object is made up lots of constituent parts. Once you see an object is just a collection of smaller bits it becomes less valuable, not even an object - it's an illusion of an object.

I've drifted off the subject but fuck it, it's Friday, so's here's my anecdote.

When I was clearing out a garage once. I found a CD in a box with a load of other shite, it was the Stoneroses' 'Second Coming' album. I had forgotten I had it, I held it in my hands and reminisced about my teenage years. I remembered I had to go to the local record shop in my hometown and ORDER IT IN, hah. It took a couple of weeks and then the goth store owner calls me up "Hey man, your CD is here." I dashed down there full of excitement and got home, probably listened to it a hundred times; it's a great album.

"Wow!" I thought to myself, so glad to have rediscovered it and happy to reconnect with the object and the memories. I put it to one side carefully... "I'm keeping that little gem safe."

I continue to sift through the box of other crap and suddenly... WHAT. THE. FUCK? There's another identical Stoneroses CD in there. I must have picked up another, borrowed it or something...

So now I'm in a real quandry.

Do I keep them both and assign some sort of 50% nostagia value to them? Clearly that's mental. Do I keep one of them? and hope that I've picked the original? And then I question why do I even want to keep what's little more than a piece of plastic?

And that's when it dawned on me. LET GO. And I did. I've let go of a lot of stuff since. But the funny thing is, I now think MORE about the CD, the memory and that experience than I ever would have done if I put the thing back in the box. So much so I bothered to tell you fine folks about it.

Have a good day.