On Materialism, and the Meaning of Home

A few weeks ago, I had the bittersweet experience of helping one of my best friends, Priya, and her husband move out of their apartment. Well, by help, I mean I watched the truck and organized some of the boxes inside. While I sat there on a slightly foggy, muggy weekday morning, attempting to read some long-neglected design book (being too cheap to buy anything new and too lazy to borrow anything), I had the opportunity to reflect on what it really means to pack up your life's belongings and transport them to a new place. In Priya and Josh's case, they were driving everything they owned up to Priya's family's house near Boston before embarking on a grand, one-year round-the-world tour.

Load after load, familiar belongings paraded into the truck. There were the paintings, all neatly wrapped in bubble wrap; there was the couch, deconstructed, with upholstery nails sticking out like thorns; there was the Saarinen womb chair in nubby red boucle, the one I had petitioned them to get, lovingly shrouded in plastic. One by one these objects were leaving Priya and Josh's beautiful two-story loft, and I imagined the space empty and forlorn -- or perhaps, once again free, free to receive the imprimatur of a new couple.

It made me quite sad. I was sad, first and foremost, because these dearest of friends were leaving. But in another way, I was sad that all the things that made their home theirs had been taken apart and surrendered to the brown anonymity of boxes, to languish in some basement. I thought about my own apartment, so beloved, and what it will feel like when I inevitably move back to California one day. Could I bear it? What a home means cannot possibly be quantified, not even by the moving consultant who comes by to say everything you own will fit into 42 book boxes, two wardrobe, three dish, plus five rolls of packing tape.

Perhaps you've been wondering why I called this blog what I did. Well, it's because I'm an unabashed and unapologetic materialist. The objects we surround ourselves with are the very building blocks of our life, totems of our memories and of our history. Without them, who are we?