When I answered this e-mailed question from a female student, it also helped me to become painfully aware of my own weakness – for I too am a collector, an accumulator, and primarily out of fear.

It is fear that prevents us from letting go. And that leads to an addiction, the compulsion to have everything that might help us to live without fear, and that can give us the (mistaken) impression that we are immortal: property, power and status.

The larger and more armoured our body is – either with muscles or fat – the safer we feel inside it. And we feel even more safe if we extend our borders out even further, e.g. by pushing our arms out in front of us like an early-warning system to form a fence behind which we are better able to defend ourselves.

So we artificially inflate and puff ourselves up by surrounding ourselves with more and more layers. These might be possessions such as houses, land or furniture. Cars, yachts and private aircraft can also enormously extend our territory or sphere of influence (you are what you own) so that others cannot get to us too easily.
Other people, friends, girlfriends, dogs, horses etc. also help to draw a large, invisible circle around ourselves. Within this circle we feel that we are under some magical protection, and that nobody can harm us there. Our possessions are there to give us security and protection.

But after just a short while we feel that the protective rampart is by no means far enough away from us, and that it is not yet as strong and high as it could be, therefore we feel obliged to gather even more cars, motorcycles, friends, women etc. around us. The fear of being unprotected and vulnerable to attack makes us greedy.
We surround ourselves with bookshelves which we stuff full of books until they reach the ceiling. If we have not been able to think these thoughts ourselves and make them part of us (and after all, who has thoughts of his own nowadays?), then we at least want to own them in their external form, as books. And anybody who comes to visit will be struck with awe and refrain from intellectual attacks when he sees how well-read and erudite we are.

It is out of fear and a profound awareness of our own inner worthlessness that we accumulate collections and possessions in the external world. And it is probably no coincidence that it is the stronger sex that numbers the most collectors in its ranks: women, cars, motorcycles, clocks, models, stamps, beer-mats, rare books, travel destinations, gourmet restaurants etc.

We drive up in our BMW and begin to define ourselves by our possessions, by what we have. We identify with our BMW and our consumption. We and our BMW (or Mercedes ...). And when someone asks who we are, he is told: that’s Peter, he drives a BMW.

At some point we also discover a desire for something higher, e.g. social status or academic honours, and we seek to satisfy this too. Now we have an academic title, are an honorary Consul, honorary Senator, Vice-Chairman of our club, honorary Indian chief, honorary Colonel of the Confederate army etc.
But it is never enough, for it is not really about the external trappings – they are only there to fill our own inner emptiness, our profound awareness of our worthlessness. We still do not feel secure inside, because we can still lose all these external things as a result of natural disasters, a stock exchange crash, criminal action or sickness – and all of us finally by death.

We darkly begin to suspect that the most valuable and important thing is to achieve a level of inner strength which will enable us to withstand any blows of fate. To do this we must learn to let go.
For we do not just own our possessions, they also own us! And if we identify with them, we become synonymous with them and disappear with and in them. We no longer really exist ourselves, but become our possessions.

We must all learn to let go before life compels us to.

Keith R. Kernspecht