Possessions: what do they mean to us?

One of my earliest memories was being with my mother in this gigantic gymnasium, filled with kids. There were all kinds of games and colorful balloons, contrasting this, otherwise, austere, white space.

I have no memory of interacting with those kids or playing those games. Instead, what I remember was getting a small plastic toy from a gumball machine, this blue poodle, pictured here.

I still have this toy, decades later. It’s weathered a lot. My cat chewed its cheeks; it’s lived in four different states within the U.S.

But it revealed the connection- the dysfunctional connection- I’ve had with possessions.

Perhaps, you’ve heard this phrase…

“Love people; use things.”

Sure, no problem with mixing those two up, right?

The fancy term for this behavior, collectively, is “Object Fetishism,” subscribing more value to objects than they hold.

Think you’re so enlightened, to be beyond the grasp of a material object’s hold on you?

How do you relate to your possessions, like your car, your, house, your I-Phone?

Ooh, now we have struck a nerve, huh?

For me, I was presented with an unflattering reality concerning possessions; I related more to stuff than to human beings.

Love:

Starting with the basics, I loved my stuff.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the premise of “Love Languages.” It’s a concept that each person has a dominant “love style,” a way of expressing the sentiment, like words of affirmation and acts of service. Not surprising, “gift-giving” is the love style that fits me.

I wish I could say it had its origins in accessing the “it’s better to give than to receive” scripture I was raised on.

Nope.

It had more to do with effective ways of keeping me quiet. As the tiniest of tots, I had become addicted to pacifiers. Once, on a family trip, away from home, my mother forgot mine. And, of course, I responded with understanding and reasonable acceptance.

Just kidding. I raged with unholy tot-ness, making the family trip miserable.

So, I suppose, concerning my mother, it was lesson learned. And mercenary tactics were implemented to ensure, in the future, I was “pacified.”

Therefore, to keep me quiet and well-behaved in grocery store shopping carts, or any public forum, my mother gave me some rubber toy to hold onto. I was preoccupied with it, especially if it had a cute face.
And true love was born. I was happy and entertained- and quiet- with my new true love. Mom could get stuff done; I didn’t rage and cause a scene.

Win-win, right?

Eh…

However unintentional, I wrongly “imprinted” onto those cute rubber toys. I related to them as real sources of love, a/k/a, nurturance.

As I grew, the object of my affection simply changed form. Rubber toys became dolls that became figurines. Unaddressed issues, addictions, dysfunctional behaviors and abusive dynamics certainly didn’t do much to alter my relationship with – and my dependency on- an inanimate object. If anything, it further convinced me, this was the only way I was going to get nurtured.

Since I have always gravitated toward faces, how much stronger was this bond? A sweet loving face, whether it be a toy, a doll, a stuffed animal or a reassuring figurine, conveyed a nurturing caretaker to me. The sweet expression and/or smile of that face was never taken away or replaced with a hostile scowl.

Nope, just unconditional- unchangeable– inanimate love.

What about you? Do you receive love from your possessions? Do the luxury and “status symbol” items, like cars, expensive shoes and the latest gadgets nurture you?

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be these “big ticket” items that accomplishes this. What about a favorite toy? A stuffed animal? A, seemingly, ordinary necklace? Are you deriving love from those less flamboyant items?

The “thing” is immaterial; it’s about the love feeling you believe it generates. What IS that? Why is that?

It can be a sense of being seen, heard and valued. It could mean protection.

Perhaps, some of us came from abusive homes and we designated a certain teddy bear to be our bodyguard. We may have done this when we were five, yet, here we are, at thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five and on, and still, we look for that protecting, nurturance from that object.

It is still transmitting “love,” especially when, perhaps, in human form, love was scarce, more painful and more difficult to come by.

Comfort and Companionship:

Not far removed from the quest for love, is our need for these two essentials. We want to be soothed and we don’t want to be alone.

I was an only child. Often, I was lonely.

Only children already have quite a bad rap as spoiled, selfish and yes excessively needy, a/k/a, lonely. This loneliness cliché is often the major argument used, pressuring people to have more than one kid.

“You don’t want them to be lonely, now, do you?”

Yes, there are those of us who are only children, but we’re human beings first. And no human being is immune from loneliness.

Indeed, it is an excellent teacher in self-soothing. And right here, many of us go off the rails. Imperfect humans seeking to self-soothe. What could possibly go wrong?

I had kids I played with, but I spent most of my time by myself, trying to entertain myself. And, again, the pacifying method was employed as I was given a lot of toys to keep me occupied.

Pinky was such a toy. A three-inch doll, she was all pink: pink dress, pink hair, pink skin. Hence the name.

I know, original.

I took Pinky with me everywhere. And I lost Pinky everywhere, because she was, well, three inches tall and I was five years old. Epic trauma and search efforts ensued. She went missing in couch cushions, behind the humidifier, in the car and even outside.

Yes, that outdoor harrowing search and rescue mission found her in a pile of freshly mowed lawn. The lawn mower, mercifully, did not decapitate her when it spit her out. It did, however, give her an unflattering Terminator Cyborg haircut and a scar above her left eye.

But my relationship with Pinky continued until one day, it didn’t.

I don’t know how or where I lost her, but it was devastating, nonetheless. If I no longer had my companion, what shall become of me? Do I turn to other loving people to comfort me?

Eh, not so much.

I had imprinted on objects, not humans, as love sources. I obsessed with getting a replacement, instead of working through my issues.

And, because it kept me preoccupied and quiet, family encouraged it.

With this subtle message, as I grew, I learned things were the pleasurable answer, not people.

Let’s face it, when you line up a possession next to breathing human being, often, it’s the human that will disappoint, betray you or cause you pain. Not the object.

What’s your “Pinky?” What possession would bring utter devastation to your world if you lost it? Why have you chosen it to be your companion? What relational need is it fulfilling?

It IS fulfilling something.

Identity:

Possessions can promise us identity; they’re aspirational. They can reflect what era we are in and where we desire to go. Here is really where the “status symbol” comes into play.

Most of go through stages as we mature. I had my Garfield stage, my purple stage, my theater mask stage. You can imagine the amount of stuff I have acquired as I moved through each of things. Each represented what caught my attention and how I could derive a sense of self from it.

Garfield inspired me to start my very own Garfield fan club at the age of eleven. My organization skills probably started budding there, as I created worksheets and word finds (yes, really) for my three club members at our weekly meetings. My purple stage came quite naturally, as I was a teenage girl and, I think, somewhere, in the Cosmos, it is written each female will, at one time or another, be obsessed with all things purple. The comedy and tragedy theater masks were next on my list as I became more involved in acting as a high school student. I had masks on everything, including hair barrettes. As a theater major in college, they even crept into my final Senior project, a performance art piece which incorporated the masks on the face of one of my characters.

What were your eras? What were the markers of individuation, of personality, of dreams and goals? We can attach power to those totems. We can believe that, by simply possessing representations of them, we can, somehow, will those things into being in our lives.

I did.

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, having goals and aspirations, but we need to ask ourselves: do I have this goal or dream or does this thing have me?

And what do we do if/when that era, that hobby, that obsession has passed?

What do we keep; what do we let go of? That needs to be a part of the identity process as well.

I have had to get rid of a lot of Garfield memorabilia, for instance. I mean, really, does the person I am now need a miniature stapler with the orange cat’s likeness on it? I think I can release that already.

We learn who we once were and can move through it, beyond it, becoming another incarnation of ourselves. That, ideally, is what you and I should be up to as we view the possessions of our various eras. We can- and we need to– let things go.

We won’t lose the essence of our identities, only the stuff that helped to get us there.

Meaning:

Ah, yes, the meaning of life.

Cancer should have brought it, crystal clear, to me. Now my priorities are perfectly aligned; now I have wisdom. Now I know what truly matters. I have the answers; I’ve figured it all out.

(I can hear you laughing at my declarations, by the way).

When I was first diagnosed with Breast cancer, over two years ago, I decided to make Kewpie dolls my official cancer-coping mascot. I derived the meaning of irreverence, strength, the whimsical imp characters coming to my aid, all by collecting some of these small doll representations.

Can you just stop and imagine how many Kewpies I’ve racked up since then?

Yeah.

They’re small in stature, the tallest being about three inches. They mostly decorate my office. And yes, they’re cute. Yes, they remind me of my Breast cancer experiences.

But that notorious side eye on that mischievous face is no longer serving the purpose it once did when I was first diagnosed.

Not surprisingly, I need more, and I’m not talking about more Kewpies.

No, I need the more substantial stuff of life. And here is where cliché triumphs Kewpie.

I need mindfulness and gratitude.

As my health, life and body have all changed over these past two years and counting, I have become aware of what remains and what is.

It’s easier to focus on what’s missing and what if.

That’s where need and greed get confused, as a pang to somehow, fill this unfillable big black hole of insecurity, woundedness and pain seems to be overpowering to us mere mortals. We can become possessed.

We think in terms of “bigger, better deal,” “What’s next” and, of course, “More.”

Satiety?

Forget it! Just gimme!

Cancer has thrown its life-altering wrench into those old patterns of thinking that promised me personal meaning.

But now, I have all too much limbo in my reality. Recurrence, things being out of my control, a death that, despite my efforts, I may not be ready for. Yeah, Kewpies cannot give meaning to that.

What has been working, as it is an ongoing, daily endeavor, is the gratitude in embracing what I do have and what is… even if it’s just for today, in this moment. Things like…

I am still alive. I can breathe.
I have my limbs and they work.
I can think and create.
I have the love from my Kewpie-enduring husband and my Joan Jett of a cat, Glory.
I have my daily lessons and opportunities of faith.

Stopping, praying and consciously thinking about these things has given meaning to me, beyond a three-dimensional object.

Yes, I have stuff; I have possessions. And yes, some of them mean special things to me.

But there is more. There’s a letting go that is transpiring where I once would have defended to the death (or would have at least given a black eye or two), at the thought of letting go of my possessions.

Again, cancer.

And the phrase, “You never see a U-Haul attached to hearse.”

I am more mindful about what I allow in my life. That is meaning, not stuff.

What about you? When you think of your possessions, are they more in the “what I don’t have” group, chasing the “bigger, better deal?”

Or are you familiarizing yourself with “what is” and what you are already experiencing as blessings?

Spiritual teacher, Ram Dass once encouraged, as a meditative practice, focus on who and where we are, stating, “I am not my (insert whatever you like, be it possession, object or personal characteristic); I am loving awareness.”

Each of us can do this. There’s nothing we need to buy.

And maybe that has been the lesson: there is nothing to buy.

Love, comfort, companionship, identity and meaning are free to roam around in, without any purchasing whatsoever.

Therefore, I wish you love, comfort, companionship, identity and meaning of the truly “loving awareness” kind!

Copyright © 2019 by Sheryle Cruse