the trap of materiality

I am falling into the trap of materiality. I mean, I have always had a little of it, but I am always willing to give up my possessions, because, they are after all, just things. But lately I am obsessed with the want for a grown-up job, a grown-up life, a house, a car, a place to do wood-shoppy kind of things. The real estate thing is the biggest albatross of this want for material goods. I want a house that K and I can call our own. I want to be making payments into something that is our own, rather than continually paying off someone else's mortgage. It isn't that we couldn't afford to have a house, we could afford the upkeep, and the mortgage, and the insurance and everything else, it would work out to a little more than we are paying now. It is that we don't have a down-payment, and saving when you are busy paying off someone else's house is never an easy thing. Of course, saving when you are living two people off of one person's salary is not easy either. Combine that with the fact that we are both impulse shoppers, and that means that we are not anywhere near ready to be able to buy the house that we both so desperately want.
I had resigned myself to the fact that I might not ever actually own my own place. I had made myself comfortable with the idea of renting on a permanent basis as I never believed I would be able to afford a place of my own. I was completely ok with that possibility. And then something changed. I guess it is the starting of K and I building our lives together, and wanting to have that something that is owned by the both of us.

I still have my childhood lusts too. I want comic books and video games and a big screen TV and a stereo etc etc. But the reality is, I don't NEED any of these things. They are, after all, just things. I have lived without them before, and I no doubt will again. All I need is some source of income (which is remaining a challenging endeavor), a roof over my head, the love of my family, my wife and my friends, and groceries. Everything else above and beyond that is a bonus and I should be content with these truly wonderous gifts that I do already possessed. And yet I am restless. I am getting caught up in the Joneses race. Most of my friends are in their own properties, both my younger siblings have their own houses. So I taunt myself by looking at real estate listings, looking at the sale fliers for the HD TV's, and drooling over sound systems that I am nowhere close to being able to afford. And I beat myself up because I do not have a job, and in not having a job, I am preventing Krista from having the things that she wants as well. Not that she would ever phrase it that way, or even express that sort of thought. But I know that she, like me, wants to make that start at something to call our own.

I want to be middle class. I want the typically American dream of a house with a picket fence, a garage and a deck. I want to be able to donate money to charities, and buy toys for my nephew, for Krista, and yes, for me. I want to be able to travel, without it being a hugely worrying deal. I want to be debt free, or least have my debts rolled into the house instead of into the education that I have already received and my credit cards. I covet what my neighbours have, and I don't believe that this is really a sin. The only sin would lie in not recognizing the blessings that I already have... I have to relearn that stuff is just stuff, and that patience will be my friend