Having and Being

I have a story.

I had a friend in school who lived close by. He and I spent hours just talking about things.

My friend convinced me to go to college after high school, even though I wasn't planning to go. I really didn't know what I wanted to be, so I figured college was a waste of time.

I was playing my guitar for a living back then, but never considered that a job or a career. It was, however, my life.

When I went to college, I started out by enrolling in the music program because I figured that was where I should be. I didn't think about any other subject because I really wasn't interested.

I took basic psychology as one of the elective courses I needed to get a degree, and was fascinated by the subject. So, I took other courses dealing with the various forms of psychology.

The school I was in allowed the professor to speak about the various disciplines of the field of psychology. I had no idea that these educated professionals would embrace one philosophy and not another. Each one had their own idea of what was right and what wasn't. They each decided to shun other philosophies, even if some of what they believed turned out to be in harmony with their way of thinking.

Luckily, even though my professor was rooted in one philosophy, she also taught many of the others, I believe I was able to get a well rounded look at the philosophy of psychology.

While I was fooling around with psychology, my friend was dabbling in other areas of philosophy. These areas of study would take one idea and examine it to death in order to try to find the truth. Sometimes, the discussion would border on absurdity, sometimes not.

To me, it seemed a waste of time. There were as many ideas out there as there were thinkers. Some “non-thinkers” came up with good ideas from time to time because they were thinking outside the box, so to speak.

So, as I learned about a set of philosophers who were intent in figuring out the meaning of human behavior, my friend was working on philosophers who were trying to figure out the meaning of life.

He convinced me to study some of the different areas of philosophy, away from psychology, and so I followed along. General Semantics, and Aristotelian logic were two that were opposed to each other's ideas.

Followers of Aristotle believed that 1+1 always equaled 2.

Followers of Alfred Korzibski's General Semantics believed that 1+1 wasn't always equal to 2.

When I tried to study both of these philosophies in the same semester, I failed. Not the courses, but rather, the ability to discern the difference between the two. The equation and the answers these two gave were absurd. Both of them are right, and both of them are wrong. Think about it, if you dare.

It seemed to me that the philosophers who concentrated on why things were rather than what was wrong, were more interesting to me.

I wasn't interested in the fact that someone was psychotic, as much as I wanted to know what made them that way.

I believe that sometimes the philosophers were the ones conjuring up the problems, and I found that to be true in many cases over the years.

So, as I ramble towards the meaning of the title of this post, and why it is important to me, I finish with the background story here.

One of the philosophers who was also a psychologist, was a writer who actually had something of value to communicate.

I will focus on this philosopher's theory, which is the title of this post.

Having and Being.

If you live in the United States of America, you are living in a state of having. Or, I should say that this is a society of Having, not of Being. We seem to live in order to accumulate things. We are not as concerned with what happens to us after we die, or how we worship God while we are alive. We are in a constant state of getting more and more stuff. Bigger houses, better cars, more toys for our children, more toys for us.

There are countries in this world that are living in a state of being. India is one country that comes to mind. They believe that they are here in order to serve God, so they are not so obsessed with Having things. They are more concerned with Being something.

Of course nothing is an absolute, even this statement. Not everyone in the United States is in the state of Having, and not everyone in India is in the state of Being. But, it seems to be what one would think when looking at either country.

I believe it is important to find a balance between Having and Being, and not to be totally in one state or the other.

Money is not the root of all evil. The pursuit of money without considering anything else might be considered the root of all evil.

Examples of “Having”

• In the end, the one with the most toys wins!

This is a very good example of what I am trying to say here. It is only one part of the pie.

Example:

• When I was growing up, I hardly remember anyone having an off-site storage unit for their extra things. If they had anything extra, they might have had a shed to store it, or in the attic or basement. Now, according to some educated idiot, there is over 2 billion square feet of storage space in the form of storage units being rented nationwide.

There is a relatively new disorder known as “hoarding”. I first became aware of it when I watched a TV show about it. Then, I observed that my wife couldn't bear to get rid of anything without great distress in her feelings of well being.

Example:

We moved 8 times over 34 years of marriage, and every time we moved, we had more and more stuff to transport. There were boxes of things that never got unpacked, yet, we had to take it along with us.

I came to believe that the purpose of getting a larger house with every move, was so that we had enough space to store our stuff. It certainly didn't seem as if we need more space to live. I would have been happy with a second bathroom.

Another example is the fact that most people store things in their garage that for the most part is nothing but junk, while they leave their very expensive, and very important car or truck outside in the weather.

What are some of the good things about Having?

• You can have your memories with you in a physical form, if you can find them among all the other stuff.

• You can give things away to others in order to help them. How many sets of old pots and pans, dishes, gizmos and gadgets do you have that some poor family could use? You can help them out without spending a dime. Give them your old stuff!
  

• You can pass things on to your kids. Memories are the things we seem to want our kids to have the most. Ancestry is another gift for the children. My wife's family goes back to the earliest times of this country's history. it would be a shame to throw any of it out. The problem is that we didn't live in a museum, and no one came to our house to look through our boxes of stuff. Most of the stuff wasn't the kind of stuff we would display anyway.
  But, we had to have it. Having made us important. I am in the process of gathering and transporting these things to one of the family members so that I won't have it anymore.
  

What are some of the bad things about having?

• You bury yourself in the past and can't get out. Again, as stated above, the only time this is bad is when it becomes an obsession, rather than a hobby. We've all seen the TV shows where someone has every thimble ever made all over their home, or something similar.
  

• You are restricted in your movement. Our home is our castle. It's a place where we go to escape the insanity of the world at the end of our day. It's a place where we can entertain our friends should we decide to do so. If, we pile it to the ceiling with our stuff, no one will want to come and see us. We end up comforting ourselves with our stuff, rather than sharing time with our friends and family.
  

• You can't find anything. My ADD allows me to find things because I know which pile they are in. But, I will not allow my piles to become so restrictive that I can't move around my home. When you have all the extra stuff, your mind becomes cluttered, and as we age, our memories can lose their sharpness. Combine the two, and it becomes a problem.
  

• Your mind becomes as cluttered as your possessions. Moderation in all things is a good idea.
  

• You waste too much time with the past and not enough time on the present. There are times for both. In my grieving process, I have been very frustrated because I want to move on, yet I can't seem to do that until my grieving is over. So, I am living in the past for now in order to make sense of it and allowing myself to eventually put things into prospective. I will survive and will begin to move forward at a faster pace as soon as I am through this process. I am not wasting time, although sometimes it seems that way to me.
  

I heard this theory of Having and Being just a little while ago.

It hit a note with me. I have been looking for answers as a way of finding closure and moving on. I have considered two extreme ways of dealing with the situation:

1. I thought about spending every penny of the insurance money I have and that will force me to deal with the present and either sink or swim.
2. I thought about selling the house and all the stuff that I absolutely don't need in order to survive. Then, I would put the money away and move into a bare bones apartment to live the rest of my life until I can figure things out.
   

Having and Being has really helped me to understand what I am going through and where I will end up.
Both of the above extremes need to be seasoned with ration, common sense, and logic.
There are people in India who walk around totally naked without any possessions of their own. That's a bit extreme. The super rich people are the other extreme. There needs to be balance. That's what I will be trying to do in the near future.
Having and Being also explains a lot about my eating patterns over the years and why I got fat. As I move away from Having and more towards Being, I will become more balanced and will be able to lose the rest of my weight, or at least enough to consider it a success.


Now, if only I can Have just a little more before I start Being....