Material Girl

Category A: Joys in life derived from interpersonal relationships. Example: Children and parents reading stories together at nighttime before bed.

Category B: Joys in life derived from experiences. Example: Peace Corps, surely, in many cases.

Category C: Joys in life derived from material posessions. Examples: Laptops; bicycles; Jif Peanut Butter; Eva Cassidy CDs; books and magazines; the mat that my neighbor gave me; electric fans; my huge wok; back scratchers; digital cameras; etc. and so forth.

I only packed 40 pounds of goodies to begin my life here, and six of those pounds were my shoes that I needed to last for two years because nothing fits my gigantic body in this place. I wanted to be a good Peace Corps volunteer, and so I left the camping gear and the telescopes and the grappling hooks at home; instead, in pure Princess Vespa fashion, I brought only what I needed to survive: clothes.

Slowly I have accumulated posessions here, and because of the frequency of typhoons, thefts, freak accidents, and the sheer clumsiness of one Katrina, I made a pact with myself that anything here is fair game for destruction. Anything that I own I should be prepared to lose. I have held strongly to that philosophy, and since my Possessions Pact of 2005, several mechanical and technological things have been stolen or ruined. No big deal. Those things can be fixed, those things can be bought again. There is no heart in them.

But I have found that there is value in other things, things that are not so easily replaced. I don't need things a whole lot, I truly don't, but some of the things that I have or, moreover, I've chosen to have here, have begun to take on importance in my life. For example, letters from my friends and family, drawings from little Pinoy children, and jeans in size 6 long are simply irreplacable. I have grown attached to these things, because they are truly all that I have to remind me of people I love and experiences I've had.

I have never before spoken about the day that a rat ate a native necklace that was given to me for my birthday in 2005. I cried. I cried like a child who was just stung by 8,000 bees. To have a beast of nature come in and take one of 100 articles and items that I possessed at the time in the Philippines was tantamount to losing a limb, or a finger, at least. The necklace was just a thing, but it represented a very special birthday with very special people, and by losing it I felt that I had lost a memory, and lost a piece of the person who gave it to me.

Every now and then the deepest parts of me battle with each other. On my left side in the back near my kidney, there is Kat who believes that things are only things; your attachment to them holds no value in life because they have no bearing on the things that really matter, like personal relationships or bettering mankind and the like. Then, waaaay up high near my collar bone and close to my esophogus, there is Rina. She thinks that it's okay to have things and to need them at times, because if none of us needed anything then we would live outside and get bitten by insects a lot and obviously we would never kayak, ever.

There is an interesting essay that is given to Peace Corps Volunteers to help us gain perspective on cultural differences between Americans and the rest of the world. Entitled “The Values Americans Live By,” it is just that: a discussion of 13 values we not only collectively share, but also that differentiate us from much of the rest of the world. In his discussion, the author notes that we would consider ourselves a lot less materialistic than we actually are. It's a fair point. We Americans often claim that we don't need things, and yet we don't necessarily live by the words we speak. We own televisions, carpet in the home, cars, computers, toys...dare I go on? But we allow ourselves to have these things because, one, they are the rewards of hard work and success, which all Americans, theoretically, can achieve (another of the values detailed); and, two, material posessions really can serve as a solid, physical representation of memories and people.

I guess in the end, I listen to the part of my brain that is inherently American, the part that knows that it's okay to have things as long as we don't need them too much. It's that part of me that is aware of the fact that I needlessly have more here than all of my neighbors here combined, and yet I can forgive myself for growing up in a different place with entirely different circumstances. And anyway, didn't I sign up for this life in the first place in order to see what other people possess and grow up with in the very country I was packing for? Yep.