One morning in January, I woke up and felt as though a spell had been broken. I looked around my room and saw how dull everything was—not because it was lacking, but because it was so heavy with stuff.
It was stuff I didn’t particularly love. Stuff with no serious meaning. Stuff I didn’t care about; stuff that, if you had secretly tossed it, I wouldn’t have even realized was missing. I had bought it because it was trendy, because a friend had it, or because I had seen an influencer my age brag about it on Instagram. In my mind, I had bought into the illusion that if I owned her things, I could become her.
As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
Standing in front of my possessions, it hit me that every object used to be money, and all that money used to be time. I was standing in front of the metabolic waste of my existence, materialized. I was looking at the portion of my life that had been turned into garbage. And the worst part is that I could’ve prevented it.
Materialism isn’t inherently evil; it can be gorgeous through the frames of abundance or art. This is the mindset that wastes a life into bags of garbage: the idea that overconsumption is a budgeting problem rather than a spiritual one. It is easy to be "spirited away," whisked into a realm operated by desires manufactured by ads and fleeting trends. Your appetite for novelty and your fear of missing out sucks the joy out of you. As the saying goes, the more you eat, the hungrier you become. The more you spend, the more vapid you feel. You lack spirit, not another fashion identity. You don’t need a new aesthetic; you need stronger values.
Who is to say that our modern emotions aren't their own kind of spells? We use terms like “mania” and “craze” to describe the way we desire things: Beatlemania, the "craze" of a new luxury drop, or a certain drink being “all the rage.”
Lust, for example, is the feeling of wanting something with a possessive craving that ends in a feeling of collapse—an appetite that, once appeased, reveals its emptiness. As Bernard Cornwell wrote:
“Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love... and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere.”
Shopping has this same effect. Often, the voyage of the "hunt" is more satisfying than the destination of ownership. We experience "post-purchase clarity"—the moment you buy something trendy and suddenly sober up to how much you don’t actually care about the object; you just wanted to be seen having it.
The painful part of loneliness is the realization that most people are sycophants and true friendship is rare. Likewise, we feel alienated when we realize our desires are herd-driven. It is like waking up from a trance and asking, What have I done to myself?
I’m finally coming to understand what the philosopher René Girard meant when he said, “All desire is a desire for being.”
We think we want things, but every desire points to a way of life—a kind of person we long to become. Objects seduce us with their promise of transcendence: status, attention, belonging. That’s why No-Face has no face: he is pure desire, the appetite to become, the emptiness that consumes while wishing it were someone else.
In Roman mythology, the temple of Juno Moneta was both a sanctuary and a mint (the origin of the words “money” and “monetary”). To strike a coin was to sanctify it with divine authority. Money still organizes meaning today. Fiat currency works because we collectively believe it means something—fiat literally means “let it be” in Latin. Its meaning is assigned by our shared narrative.
Because money is tethered to desire, it doesn’t just reflect value; it follows it. It is the pull of eyes when a sports car glides by. As Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, said: “When you create desire, profits are a consequence.” Shopping is a literal form of kamikakushi—a spiritual realm that strips away our names.
William Morris famously advised, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” When we ignore this, we reach toward idols to imitate. We chase a sense of immortality through possessions. Yet, desire is never about the object itself. If it were, the desire would vanish once you acquired it. Instead, your wardrobe keeps growing while you still feel you have "nothing to wear."
Desire is about what the object promises: a richer existence. This is why Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” test is so effective; it reframes consumption as discernment. It asks whether an object raises your spirit or weighs it down. Left unchecked, your possessions take away your freedom. As the narrator says in Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.”
Every now and then, I still feel my value system wavering under the seduction of a storefront window. But this isn't about learning “how to spend less.” It is about the freedom to just be you.
As Chuck Palahniuk wrote: “You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your designer khakis.”
Stronger values make you spend more mindfully because they shift the axis of your desire. When you know what you worship—what you actually stand for—everything is tested against that vision. Values act like a sieve: they filter out the empty cravings born of comparison and let through only what serves your spirit. Without values, you are merely “distracted,” pulled away from yourself by algorithms and envy.
But if you aim at your highest value—placing no other gods above it—you free yourself from the distractions that split your soul. You can finally stop consuming, and start becoming.
