Possessions Breed Anxiety
Story★★★★Dr. Bernard Clausen, formerly of Pittsburgh and Cleveland, humorously relates that some friends at a farewell church reception gave him a very expensive watch to replace the Ingersoll he had always carried. Traveling on the train that night, he was plagued in his berth by the problem of what to do with the watch. His old Ingersoll he had kept in a hammock or pocket and didn’t care.
But this new expensive watch was something different. He dare not put it in a hammock lest it get smashed by a lurch of the train. He dare not put it under his pillow lest it fall out on the floor. He dare not put it in his pocket lest a thief steal it.
Anxiety overcame him until it reached a point where he could not sleep for he felt it necessary to keep awake to protect his watch. “You see,” he said, “my friends by this costly watch had enslaved me.
They had made me the caretaker of a watch.”
The point
An expensive gift watch becomes a burden of anxiety; possessions can enslave us with worry and care more than freedom.