After doing a bit of research, I decided that comedian George Carlin has the best insight on the subject of hoarding.

“The whole meaning of life is trying to find a place for your stuff.”

“Stuff”, as Carlin so aptly names it, is what life is all about for 99% (my statistic) of Americans. We are a nation of stuff hoarders. Stuff is what we are about. Our stuff fills our houses, our cars, our offices and even our pockets. We cannot function without our stuff. Our stuff defines our status, our value and often our direction in life. We treasure our stuff so intensely that many of us will shoot you dead if you try to take our stuff away.

Most of our time is spent taking care of our stuff; repairing, cleaning, rearranging, storing and planning how to get more of it. We compare our stuff to other people’s stuff in order to feel normal or special or superior. We cannot imagine a life without it and often feel sorry for stuff-deprived individuals from “inferior” cultures who have non-stuff centered values. We have even created a t-shirt that reads “He who dies with the most toys (stuff) wins.”

Does our obsession with our stuff make us a nation of hoarders? Yes, absolutely.

Why are we so obsessed with our stuff? The answer to that is not funny. It is sad and even tragic. I am convinced that our passion for stuff, our stuff-hoarding, exists because it is a substitute for soul. We Americans lack a daily connection to and experience of soul. Our post-modern society, a society that values things (stuff) above all, has lost touch with our deepest essence and needs.

We yearn for a soul-fullness (deep meaning) in our relationships, our work, our play and in our experience of ourselves — but for some strange and sad reason (another article) we missed the exit on the turnpike and are rocketing towards a destination defined solely by stuff…a poor and tragic substitute.

Hoarding, in this context, is a form of addiction. We cannot find the deeper meaning we seek and so desperately need, and so we substitute another substance. That substance functions like a drug. It makes us high for a brief time and distracts us from the pain of the loss (of soul). Then the high wears off and we have to use the drug of stuff once again. We then are trapped in a deadly cycle of pain and an ever-increasing drive to find more drugs (stuff).

So here we are boys and girls, a nation of addictive hoarders of stuff of many colors, so intent on holding on that we cannot see the wall that this train is headed for…meaninglessness. But, as they say: “She who dies with the most stuff wins” and we are intent on winning no matter the cost.

I say, “Wins what?”

I ask, “What happens if we drop the stuff and look for soul?”

[Ed. note: Dr. Matthew Anderson is an author (The Prayer Diet), counselor and national columnist/expert on weight loss, motivation, self-management and relationships. To find tough-minded, outside-the-box guidance for taking charge of your life and/or your weight including Eating to Kill, click here.]

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