Are You Too Attached To Material Things?

About 6 years ago I was flying from Miami to London with my wife after a vacation to the Caribbean. It was the first time we had flown after 9/11 and airport security was ramped up, as you would expect. The lines were horrendous and not helped by the fact that most people didn’t really know what was expected of them, including me.

 

I always used to carry my toiletries bag in my hand luggage in case my suite cases went missing. At that time there was a Swiss Army Knife in there that I used to take on business trips or vacations. It had been a present from my parents for my 10th birthday many years before and I guess it had some sentimental value.

 

It had all sorts of tools on that I seldom used like a thing for getting things out of things and another pointy thing that looked like it was designed to pluck out the eyeball of the snoring drunk sat next to you on any long journey. About all I ever used on it were the scissors for doing my poorly manicured fingernails and a blade for stabbing myself in the leg with to keep me awake during very boring sales meetings.

 

On this particular day I was forced to take it out because of the flashing lights and sirens being set off during the security checks. It was a while before it dawned on me that it was my penknife that had Navy Seals swooping on me from every direction. On reflection that may be a slight exaggeration but I’m sure I was told rather sternly to open my bag by a tough looking middle-aged women.

 

There sat the forgotten errant knife.

 

It was too late to check it into our main cases as they had long since gone for their annual kicking by underpaid grudge-bearing baggage handlers so I reluctantly had to hand it over.

 

My wife was distraught. She knew how long I had had the little fella and what she thought it meant to me. I wasn’t particularly bothered because after all it was just a knife not a Picasso masterpiece or Porsche Carrera.

 

She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t bothered and I really couldn’t understand why she was. I could buy a new better one if it was that important. Maybe if it had been worth a lot of money and I needed to replace it immediately that may have been annoying, but I didn’t so it wasn’t.

 

People often get too attached to material objects like this for ‘sentimental’ reasons and it isn’t very helpful. I am not suggesting that we never keep items that are passed down through generations and maybe valuable but the point is this. The object is not the person that gave it to you and every entity on the planet will at some stage in history cease to be it’s simply a matter of time.

 

If you lose something, break something or have something of sentimental value stolen you have 2 options. You can feel dreadful and depressed about it or you can decide to remember the people and emotions that you had attached to that object with fondness safe in the knowledge that nobody can take your memories away from you. I chose the latter.

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