Are we obsessed with having more?

 As we accumulate more possessions, they stop being possessions but items to yield yet more benefits for us.

Consumption is no longer just about what we buy. It has found its way into how we measure success.

In our pursuit of more, even the things that once existed simply for pleasure are increasingly expected to produce something in return.

I was sitting near my record player the other day, listening to Janis Joplin sing “Mercedes Benz”, a satire about consumerism and our desire for the good life.

Listening to it now, I wondered if we ever really got the joke, when I was reminded of an old belief of mine.

Books taught me words. They taught me articulation and expression. But songs taught me everything else.

Love, loss, longing, rebellion, disappointment, growing older. Long before I had the language to explain any of it, somebody had already put it into a song.

We still want the car. The house. The title. The salary. The right school for our children. I like nice things too. But somewhere along the way, the things we owned stopped being just things. They became evidence that we were doing well in life.

Then a conversation about reading made me wonder if consumption had moved beyond the things we buy.

A leader I work with had spoken at a conference about the power of reading and the written word. He later shared with a small group of us how the conversation inevitably found its way back to corporate leadership, an idea he gently challenged.

Of course it did.

Even the simple pleasures of reading must now have an outcome to measure.

A book should make us better leaders, sharper thinkers, more employable people. We exercise for performance and network with purpose. Hobbies become side hustles. Even rest needs to be productive.

When did everything, even books, have to earn its keep?

Economics studies what we consume. Psychology helps explain why we want it. Identity is where it gets personal, because what we consume can become part of how we measure ourselves.

We have always compared ourselves with others. We Malaysians are especially good at peering over the fence at relatives with supposedly greener pastures, colleagues and next door neighbours. Now, through social media, we carry millions of other lives around in our phones.

Someone earns more. Someone bought the Mercedes. Someone’s child got straight As. Someone landed a new job or promotion and announced it before breakfast.

The comparisons never end.

Malaysia has its own version of this question. We measure progress through growth, investment, income, infrastructure and development. We should. But what is enough for a country?

Shouldn’t progress also be felt around the dinner table at home?

A decent home. Good schools. Meaningful work. Healthcare we can afford. Time with people we love. Enough money left at the end of the month to breathe, and a retirement fund that makes growing old feel less daunting.

And a book read for no reason other than wanting to know what happens next, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, where a hookah-smoking Caterpillar asks Alice the rather pivotal question, “Who are YOU?”

Maybe a good life does not need to produce something every minute. Some things should be allowed to exist simply because they make being alive a lot richer.

I looked back at the record spinning beside me.

Janis was still waiting for her Mercedes-Benz.

I think I’ll keep the records. And that wonderfully strange little book about Alice. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT