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| World's Largest Rubber Ducky collection. At least it's organized. |
Linda usually skips over articles with psycho-babble about why people do the things they do. This article interested her though. It was about something called Hedonic Adaption. The gist of the article was that "stuff" does not produce happiness, in fact, it's just the opposite. Mostly, it adds more stress to peoples lives and ultimately effects their life satisfaction. Hedonic Adaption is a fancy way of saying that people get used to things. At first a new car or iPhone is super exciting. You can't keep your hands off your new smartphone. Then, it is just so-so and pretty soon, it's just another way for people to contact us that we don't want to talk to. That new car was just what you wanted. Then the $500 a month car payment starts causing us to stress and ultimately, resent the car. Maybe you collect comic books. You start stressing because your collection is not complete, then the 10,000 comic books you had to have need to have are taking over your life. You need to sort, store and catalog them. It ultimately becomes an albatross around your neck. Humans also don't learn from this. The same excitement/disappointment circle happens again and again. This is called the Hedonic Treadmill. Sometimes the thrill of the fancy car isn't even for us. It's because it makes you feel better or more successful than your neighbor. Anyway, since Linda has been working on getting rid of her stuff, she has felt lighter, freer and less encumbered. Back in the day when she had credit card debt from buying stuff and a car loan because she wanted the "turbo" fast model, it was a horrible weight she constantly thought about. Of course, some people don't care about stuff at all...but their pride or selfishness is a constant battle. Linda knows all about those two.
