Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

tied down by what we own. Every piece of expensive jewelry comes
with an insurance bill, every mansion with a staff of groundskeepers,
every investment with obligations and monthly statements to review,
every exotic pet and plant with a set of responsibilities. F. Scott
Fitzgerald said that the rich are different than us, and his novels
portray them as free and without care.
That’s not quite right.
Mo’ money, mo’ problems, and also mo’ stuff, less freedom.
John Boyd, a sort of warrior-monk who revolutionized Western
military strategy in the latter half of the twentieth century, refused to
take checks from defense contractors and deliberately lived in a
small condo even as he advised presidents and generals. “If a man
can reduce his needs to zero,” he said, “he is truly free: there is
nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to
hurt him.” To that we would add, “And he or she can also be still.”
No one dogged by creditors is free. Living outside your means—as
Churchill could attest—is not glamorous. Behind the appearances,
it’s exhausting.
It’s also dangerous. The person who is afraid to lose their stuff,
who has their identity wrapped up in their things, gives their
enemies an opening. They make themselves extra vulnerable to fate.
The playwright Tennessee Williams spoke of luxury as the “wolf
at the door.” It wasn’t the possessions that were the problem, he said,
but the dependency. He called it the catastrophe of success, the way
that we become less and less able to do things ourselves, the more
and more we cannot be without a certain level of service. Not only is
all your stuff a mess, but you need to pay someone to come clean it
up.
There is also what we can term “comfort creep.” We get so used to
a certain level of convenience and luxury that it becomes almost
inconceivable that we used to live without it. As wealth grows, so
does our sense of “normal.” But just a few years ago we were fine
without this bounty. We had no problem eating ramen or squeezing
into a small apartment. But now that we have more, our mind begins
to lie to us. You need this. Be anxious that you might lose it. Protect
it. Don’t share.
It’s toxic and scary.