What You Are vs. What You are Not (message ahead - apologies in advance)

I have become frustrated with our culture's attempts to conflate material goods with actual worth. In other words, much of our (western, consumer) culture encourages you to think that because you *buy* something, you *are* something. There's no doubt that this is an effective marketing strategy. But it's also a lie.

Here is the truth about what you are not:

• You are not your bank account.
• You are not your choice of booze. (Related: your choice of booze will not help/hurt your chances of getting laid. I've done a lot of applied research in this area so I know what I'm talking about.)
• You are not your house.
  
• You are not the car you drive.
  
• You are not your bookshelf.
• You are not where you went to college, grad school, law school, or vocational school. You are nothing to do with your school at all.
  
• You are not your dog or cat.
  
• You are not your religion.
  
• You are not your playlist on your ipod, or your favorite band, or your guitar, or whatever.
• You are not any material thing.
  

What you are:

• How you treat yourself.
• How you treat other people.

These are the only things in your life that you can control completely from the beginning until the end. They are the only things every person on the planet shares with every other person. You 'own' a lot of things in the world, but these are the things you own that matter the most. If you take away all the crap that separates or differentiates you from people that live in other parts of the world, you will still have this.

So don't get too carried away with the material bullshit this holiday season (or any other time).

Love you, and thanks for reading.

(image courtesy the Life photo archive on Google, copyright Time, inc.)