Most of the things rattling around in our heads aren’t real. By “real,” I mean you can’t physically poke at them. Still, real or imagined, we love to give those intangible ideas a physical form. So, what do we do? We find a way to realize them by making these ideas into physical things so they’re finally “real.” The more we can transform ideas into things we can actually feel, the more satisfied we seem to be with our place in the universe. We find a way to realize them so they’re finally tangible, officially crossing the threshold from the ethereal to the material.
In theory, the desire to merge the world of ideas with the world of things is perfectly fine. Curation, in its truest form, is necessary for human development. Collecting inherently valuable things can elevate a person. Unfortunately, ideation has become less about manifesting creativity and more about things we can collect and profit from. The cult of collecting, as I see it, is the true modern religion. Somewhere along the line, we replaced making things we value with buying things that represent them.
While this has been a human quirk for ages, we’ve gone completely off the rails in modern culture with the compulsive need to manifest everything we value into something you can buy at Hot Topic. Once you’re collecting Funko Pops or coffee mugs with inspirational quotes, you’re just filling your life with junk that will one day haunt you in the form of yard sale or thrift store donation fodder.
But in the unfortunate case where your collecting spirals into full-blown consumerism, when it becomes about owning rather than appreciating, that’s when it starts to get ugly. There’s always one more figurine or limited-edition T-shirt that makes your life feel incomplete if you don’t buy it immediately. Before you know it, you’re broke, and your home is filled with a bunch of stuff that doesn’t mean a damn thing.
The best collectors don’t just amass things; they create something more out of what they love. If you’re passionate about something, write about it, draw it, or do something else with it that doesn’t involve forking over another stack of your hard-earned cash to some conglomerate.
Next time you’re thinking about picking up that tenth action figure from your favorite childhood cartoon or buying the entire catalog of your favorite pop star’s merch, ask yourself: is this something that has true intrinsic or sentimental value? Or am I just being bamboozled into thinking I need this thing to connect with something intangible? Trust me, your future self not being buried under a mountain of stuff will thank you for it.
~ Amelia Desertsong
